


to be near you for a while

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Modern Westeros, Multi, Oberyn is Chris Harrison, Pining, Slow Burn, The Bachelorette - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2020-09-05 19:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 69,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After being blindsided on Harry’s season of The Bachelor, Sansa is chosen to be the next Bachelorette. Afraid of getting her heart broken again on national television, she enlists her close friend Theon to pose as a contestant to gauge which of her suitors are here for the right reasons and who is just playing her for a shot at fame.





	1. The Dumping

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea that came to me as me and @fowlaaa were talking about Bachelor in Paradise, so... it's happening! I've been super into this idea and I really hope you guys have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

The limousine had just pulled up to the venue for the final rose ceremony when the three women occupying the back seat descended upon Sansa, dabbing at her face with brushes caked with powder while another set of hands spritzed her with rose water and perfume. She squeezed her eyes shut, her mascara suddenly feeling a bit too heavy for her liking, though she had been assured time and time again by her artists that it would look more natural on camera than it did in real life. She wanted to look her best for this. For the beginning of the rest of her life.

Shae smoothed her hair out, thankfully abstaining on hairspray in favor of smoothing her straightened auburn hair down manually.

Of all the girls on Sansa's makeup and hair crew, Shae was definitely her favorite girl and she seemed to take a similar shine to Sansa; nothing had been more touching and horrifying than finding out that Shae had sabotaged Roslin’s blowout hairstyle on Sansa’s two-on-one in a misguided attempt to help her out. They had become friends quickly enough and agreed to add one another on social media once Sansa had access to her phone again, after this was all over.

“Knock him dead,” Shae whispered encouragingly to Sansa, throwing her a salacious wink to which she practically giggled with excitement, giddy to the very bone at the prospect of being an engaged woman the next time she saw her friend.

Her, engaged.

Sansa Stark, _engaged!_

She was coming to this beach as a contestant on a reality TV show, and would leave as a woman ready to start her life with a man she was swiftly falling more and more in love with by the second, despite only having known him for a short time with prying cameras all around and twenty-nine other girls to compete with.

Sansa had been hesitant when it came to ‘the process’ at first, especially once she had signed a contract and practically promised her livelihood to a television network, but the very moment he gave her his first impression rose, she was enamored. It was the closest thing to love at first sight that she had ever felt, and it was magical and _real_ against all sense and reason. All the heartbreak she had been through to get here, everything that she had opened up to him about on their soul-baring evenings on the chaise lounge together, seemed to melt away in comparison to this new love bubbling up within her.

She might even love him, as mad as the thought of it was.

Sansa gave her dress a once over before she prepared to exit the car, the look a little much for her taste, considering she didn't really favor strapless gowns at all. It was one that he would like though, all black lace on cream fabric, and just sexy enough with a dip down the bodice to expose a peek of her cleavage. It was risqué, but at least it would look good on screen.

“You look hot,” Shae assured her with a roll of her eyes, patting her hair down once more as the other two girls on her team crawled back onto the floorboard of the limousine so as to not get in the shot when Sansa was filmed stepping out of the car.

It was odd in a lot of ways, that so much of the fairytale fantasies this show built up were manufactured, while other parts of it were truly authentic.

“Sansa,” a voice came from the front seat, to which Sansa’s eyes flicked forward to the woman who had been her primary producer for the course of the season. All of her other girls had been sent home by this point, leaving only Sansa as her next hope of getting a raise. "A moment?"

She had demonstrated that she didn't care about the money so long as Sansa was happy, having grown closer to her than most producers did with their contestants, though that never stopped Baelish from trying to chat her up despite being assigned to produce different women.

Brienne ignored whoever was speaking to her on the other end of her mic in favor of smiling tensely at Sansa, as she always did.

She had a good heart —too good for all of the controversies she had been on the receiving end of just five seasons earlier when the Bachelor at the time had sent all of his contestants home in favor of publicly declaring his love for her— but never seemed to give herself time to rest when she was immersed in her work. Brienne cared about her wellbeing which was more than Sansa could say for the majority of the other producers and crew who had come to her throughout filming in an attempt to stir up drama with her and the other girls in the house.

“What is it, Brienne?” Sansa asked politely, not wanting to snap at her closest friend on production when all she wanted was to get the ball rolling.

She felt jittery all over like she could collapse at any moment from the nerves.

“Chin up, alright?” She looked like she wanted to say more but refrained, nodding at Sansa encouragingly instead of saying whatever was on her mind, to which Sansa could only blink in confusion and smile back at her. It was a strange thing to say but wasn’t the weirdest thing she had heard from the woman over the past two months. This was it. She had thought for sure that she would have been sent home on the first night, or at Vaes Dothrak during the drama surrounding chocolate strawberry-gate, or at Meereen when Harry had called her name last in the line of girls waiting for a rose at the rose ceremony. "You've got this."

She wouldn’t overanalyze it, though, not when she had somewhere to be, so she instead drew in a deep breath and swiveled her legs to the side to brace herself for her exit. Falling on the ground and embarrassing herself wasn’t an option, not when there would be a dozen cameras filming her every move.

This was going to be one of the most important days of her life.

The limo door was opened for her deftly and whichever intern was tasked with the job leaped out of the way to make room for the cameramen that crowded either side of her, filming just a bit too close for comfort as they always did. She had never quite gotten used to all of it, especially when she would spend entire makeout sessions stressing about whether or not she would look like a bad kisser on television and get made into memes online that Arya and Rickon would undoubtedly hold over her head until she died of mortification, or stress that her fears would get warped and taken advantage of by production like Shae had warned her.

No matter what happened today, it would be a memory for her- it would be life-changing, even if he chose someone else. It was still a possibility, despite his whispered promises to her and the soft kisses peppered into her hair during their last date. His mother had hated her, she knew that off the bat. She had tried so hard to please her when they'd met, but she recognized the look of a scorned, skeptical mother anywhere- Joffrey's mum had taught her that much. 

It was a risk she took by coming on this show, by opening her heart up to someone whose job was to date thirty women at the same time. She knew that and reasoned with herself not to fall too hard or fast... and yet, she couldn't help the candle of hope that lit inside her heart.

Sansa ignored the cameras as she had been instructed to do from the beginning of her run on the show, crossing the cute little paved pathway of the beach as expertly as she could in her stilettos.

_Don’t fall_, she reminded herself as a glittering on the ground caught her eye. The sand was adorned with glass shells that must have taken the crew hours to perfect for the event. They shone a pretty pale blue and pink under the light, sparkling in a manner that seemed perfectly timed with the setting sun behind a figure standing at the center of the arrangement, clad in a proper suit and tie.

It was perfect.

She had eyes for no one except for _him_, standing beside a podium with a rose resting on it, grinning at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

For all that her family and friends back home had taken the piss out of her for even agreeing to go on a reality show that sold ‘true love’ and staged drama for profit, it seemed like she really was going to get her fairytale ending out of it.

She couldn’t wait to shove her ring into Theon and Arya’s faces and gloat about her success at finding love on a show that they had mocked her mercilessly for watching over the past few years. It all started when Jeyne, her college roommate, introduced her to it over shot glasses filled with cheap wine, and somehow turned into weekly watching parties, and then she made an application video after a few glasses of liquid courage gave her the stones to do it.

Three months later and now, here she was, stepping up the blond-haired man whose grin seemed to widen with each step she took towards him.

_I’m going to choose you_, Harry had whispered to her during their fantasy suite date as she snuggled into him, nude under the covers and finally away from the intrusive eyes of the cameras and crew. It had been their first night together without the pressure of being on television weighing them down and holding them back from acting on their feelings, and the date couldn’t have been more romantic. _Today, tomorrow, and every day after that. I’ll choose you every time_.

It was like every word he said was ripped straight from a romance novel, the very embodiment of the charming prince she had imagined for herself as a child when she crawled onto her mother’s lap over her summer holidays and watched her soap operas with her while father was away at work. Her siblings never cared for romance as much as she did, but her mom at least indulged her with her soaps.

She stopped in front of Harry with an excited spring in her step.

“Hi,” she breathed out and his eyes seemed to crinkle around the corners with amusement at how nervous she was. He was as calm and collected as ever, a stark contrast to how her stomach was flipping over in her stomach over and over again until she felt like she might vomit. It had to be a good thing that they differed in this way though, since everyone always said that opposites attracted.

Harry reached for her hands without waiting another beat, flashing her one of his pearly smiles as the sunlight shone on them both, cameramen shuffling around them close to the ground to try to get a good angle of their now-joined hands.

“Sansa Stark,” Harry started, still staring at her with those tender, smoldering eyes that he had become nationally adored for when he lost out on Mya’s season just half a year ago. “Throughout this journey, you have been my guiding star and my inspiration in everything I do. I’ve grown to care about you deeply and truly.”

It was like he knew exactly what to say to make her heart flutter like a swarm of butterflies had gathered in her chest and yearned to make their escape.

He drew in a deep breath and she could feel it coming, willing herself not to cry before he even had a chance to propose. The ‘yes’ was on the tip of her tongue, and she could barely contain the blinding smile that crossed her lips when he looked back at her, his lips curved up in that secretive way that he seemed to reserve just for her.

He squeezed her hands lightly and glanced in the direction of the showrunner before swiftly focusing his gaze back on Sansa.

Her entire life was about to change.

“You make me so happy, Sansa, and I know that I’ve loved you from the moment I met you,” Harry smiled at her encouragingly and she let out a breathy laugh, unable to come up with anything to say that could rival that. "I knew when we went to Pentos that- I knew that you would leave a mark on my heart, and I-"

She nodded eagerly at his words, his hands warm in hers, unable to comprehend that this was really happening; she was standing on a beach in Norvos with a man who had promised her a lifetime of happiness together just days prior. Harry's breath seemed to catch in his throat as he looked at her, his smile dimming as if there was something pressing on his mind. The last time she had seen him look like this was when they had debated the state of the Westerosi national economy on their first night in the mansion together. 

“You’re one of the most special women I’ve met in my life and our bond goes _so_ deep, Sansa." His voice shuddered, and she tilted her head to the side, wondering if all men cried during proposals. "It’s truly something else. There’s no one like you. And that…” he didn’t break eye contact with her as he spoke, each word softer than the last, “is why letting you go is going to be the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. Sansa, I need you to know that this isn't-”

Her hands stilled from where they were rubbing circles around the inside of his palm and she was sure that she had to have misheard him.

“What?” Sansa asked immediately, unable to make sense of any of what he had just said when he was still looking at her like that.

He grimaced as if he too was at a loss for words; as if _he_ was hurting more than she was when she wasn't the one breaking _his_ heart on national television.

What did that even _mean_ if she wasn’t special enough for him to choose her after he had all but swore to her that it would be them at the end of this?

What did he even have to gain from lying, other than humiliating her? She couldn’t even begin to voice her confusion, half hoping that this was all an elaborate, poorly-timed trick of his to surprise her with an unexpected proposal. How did she not see this coming? How could she have been so _stupid_?

“The past two months have been magical, Sansa,” Harry placated her like he was talking to a child, not letting go of her hands even as she tried to yank them away, as if he could make this up to her somehow. His eyes were moist as he tried to hang onto her for as long as he could manage. "I want you to know that it's not anything you did and I really did mean everything I said to you, it's just-"

Every word sounded false now, as if he was just trying to get this over with as quickly as he could, but he wouldn’t stop talking.

“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted from a wife, Sansa." He explained pleadingly, following her step backwards with one of his own forward. "This whole time, I’ve been trying not to fall in love with you and I've been making a mess of it, I know, but it's been hard for me to balance the- the safe decision and the right decision, and what if they're both the same decision?" She whipped backwards as a if she had been slapped and he fumbled to salvage whatever point he was trying to make. "And you're not safe, Sansa, Gods, you aren't. You're- I don't know how serious you are about marriage and I don't even know how serious _I_ am about-"

It was like he had plunged a dagger in her heart and was just twisting it around to see how long it would take for her to succumb to the wounds he was giving her.

How could he even say any of this after what he had told her in their fantasy suite?

She couldn’t make sense of it, thinking about what he had told her as they laid in bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms, and talked about their future like it even had a chance in the first place. If he wanted to propose to her, why wasn't he? Worse yet, not proposing to her meant he would propose to someone else. Probably right after her. And they would laugh and kiss and drink champagne and make a toast to their marriage and their future together like she hadn't existed at all. The thought made the wound in her heart bleed more than it already was, and she fought to school her expression into one of neutrality.

“It just… it isn’t us.” Harry whispered, finally letting go of her hands to run a hand through his hair, the awkward hiss in the air between them consuming more space between them as she stepped away from him. “I wanted it to be, but I can't _just_ follow my heart with something like this. I’m sorry.”

Sansa opened and closed her mouth, tears prickling at her eyes as her heart cracked in her chest for the tenth time since he had begun speaking. How could he do this to her after everything she had confided in him about? Did he want to hurt her? Was there something about her that made men want to hurt her for their own amusement? Couldn’t he have had the decency to at least warn her that he had been having doubts about their connection?

Suddenly, fury flared up within her. Myranda had told her time and time again that she was just in it to sell those stupid vitamin hair gummies on Instagram. And _she_ was getting proposed to? Sansa wanted love, not followers, and he was throwing that away on a girl who didn't even want him to be their suitor. 

Suddenly she was acutely aware of the cameras, all of them filming her reaction to the news as if she was a spectacle and not a girl getting her heart broken by a man who she thought loved her. And now all of Westeros would see her make a fool out of herself, all because she’d trusted the wrong man, _again_.

She yearned for her bed, and for a comforting set of arms to wrap around her, and for the ground to swallow her whole so she wouldn’t have to stand here anymore, basking in her own heartbreak and unshed tears.

_You lied to me_, she wanted to say but found that nothing came out.

Frustrated tears threatened to spill from her eyes as it became increasingly difficult to swallow. Neither of them said anything and it seemed that Harry had the sense to brace himself to be on the receiving end of her wrath, seeming to know full well how badly he had fucked up here. The worst of it was that he’d likely escape the situation unscathed, still beloved by millions of viewers at home.

Gods, she hated him for doing this to her.

The silence stretched on for several moments before Harry reached out to touch her arm lightly, his smile more pitying now even as she flinched away from his touch defiantly. He didn’t get to do that anymore, especially not now. He faltered at the action but coughed awkwardly, glancing around him as if requesting some help from the crew in getting her out of here. Had he always been such an asshole?

“Can I walk you out?” He asked her quietly as if daring her to make a scene so he could play the ‘she’s crazy’ card when the time came to confront each other on the after-show special came. “Sansa?”

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of spinning this in his favor.

Without spending another moment thinking about it, she nodded, rejecting his outstretched arm to walk silently by his side.They shuffled beside each other, Harry glancing around him every few moments like he was looking for someone to tell him what to do now that someone was angry with him. He was always such a people pleaser and gods, did he tell all of the girls on his fantasy suite dates that he would pick them just to pacify them?

The thought made her feel sick.

Her heels felt like they might break under the weight of her feet now, each step she took heavier than the last. Resisting the urge to slap the closest camera to her away, she kept her gaze fixed on the limo in front of her, praying for release from this situation as they trudged forward.

This wasn’t how she expected today going.

Once Harry had walked her to the limo, he gathered her into a brief hug that she hadn’t expected from him. Was he doing this because he felt bad or because he wanted it to play it up for the sake of putting on a good show? The embrace was stiff, and she didn’t return it, instead staring blankly at the seashells in front of her, thinking on how Theon might have liked them. He always liked collecting things like that, though he refused to admit it to anyone but her and Robb. Perhaps she would ask Brienne about it later on and see if she could get some for him.

After what felt like forever, Harry released her from his grip and took one last look at her, as if he was in some telenovela that required the most melodrama going forward. Everything they shared before seemed to be tainted now; every kiss, every touch, every cheesy line, every self-composed poem… was any of it real? He opened the limousine door for her, standing in place before stepping backward five robotic steps to allow the cameras to get a good angle at her glowering at him.

She felt her lower lip tremble as soon as the door slammed shut beside her.

Immediately, she realized that there were two cameras pointed at her, Brienne now occupying the seat that Shae had been in when she had first been dropped off at the final rose ceremony’s venue. She looked agonized at having to be the one to ask the questions that came with a Bachelor exit, and Sansa was at least grateful for how transparent the producer was with her feelings.

She wouldn’t have talked to anyone but Brienne on the staff after the dumping, despite the hindsight she now had that she had known what would happen. There was only so much she could tell her without risking her job, Sansa knew, and she appreciated how much of a comfort Brienne had been to her at the mansion even when she didn’t have to be. And she was prepared for the invasive questions that would soon be coming her way, ready for the blows.

“How are you feeling, Sansa?” She asked concernedly, and it sounded like she really meant it, unlike many of the other producers Sansa had come to know.

“I…” Sansa croaked, her voice wavering embarrassingly when she finally gathered the courage to speak, doing so before she even thought of what she could say now. That he lied to her? That she felt broken? That she felt unlovable? Maintaining her dignity in her exit had been her priority when she had first come on the show, so she hesitated to reveal much. “I don’t know.”

“Did you think he’d choose you?”

The question stung but she knew Brienne had to ask it.

“Yeah,” Sansa swallowed the lump in her throat and glanced out of the window as the car drove off, leaving her mangled heart and liar of a suitor behind her. “He told me… he told me he was going to choose me. That it was me and him.”

Suddenly she realized how juvenile it sounded. She was twenty-six years old, not sixteen, yet she sounded like the same naïve girl who couldn’t tell a bald-faced lie from the truth. “And I-I believed him, like an idiot. I- I opened up to him and he… God, I’m so stupid. I have no- I’m…”

She was teetering on a breakdown now, so she stopped herself from saying any more, feeling even more mortified that her whimpering would be aired on television. Like this wasn’t humiliating enough.

“You’re not stupid, Sansa,” Brienne comforted her firmly as the camerawoman adjusted the camera slightly to get closer to her. The movement distracted Sansa for a moment and she used it to try to steady herself, to be better. “You opened up to him, didn’t you? And you told him things you’ve never told anyone?”

Right.

Of course they knew about all of that.

It didn’t help that there were cameras everywhere she went, open or secret ones, and mic packs strapped to her at all times. Harry, Brienne, and every damned person that worked on this show knew about her trauma now, and for what? She crossed her arms over her chest and wetted her lips, licking her lip gloss clean off. “I did.”

“Do you regret telling him that?” She questioned, though she took no joy in it.

“Now?” Sansa scoffed humorlessly, her eyes locking on the lens of one of the cameras before she turned back to her producer. “Of course I regret it now. I opened up to him and he… Gods, he threw it back in my face. I told him about everything, Brienne. My life, my heart, I had- I had so much love to give and I… he said I was precious to him. That he loved me, that he was the one for me and I was the one for him.”

Sansa shook her head as her tears finally escaped her eyes and streamed down her face freely. She hated feeling this way, like she was weak and stupid for trusting someone to love her back. Love could be beautiful, couldn’t it? Just because he was the third in a string of assholes didn’t mean that she was doomed to end up alone. She would find someone someday, someone better-suited for her than Harry ever was. He would regret ever letting her go.

“Do you think he was the one for you?” Brienne continued with a wince as if she was repeating a question being given to her by whoever was on the other end of it, likely their showrunner. Gods, who was even coming up with this shit?

“He wasn’t the one for me,” Sansa snapped back indignantly before reminding herself who she was actually angry with. “Sorry, Brienne, I just…”

She shook her head. “No. He wasn’t the one for me. Maybe he never was. Maybe I just saw what I wanted him to be instead of what he really was.” Sansa worried her lower lip between her teeth as she looked out of the window at all the trees they were passing. The sky had turned a bluish hue now, and the sun was fully obscured from sight. “I don’t know.”

This was real.

They were driving her to the hotel. She had gotten dumped. This was going to be on television.

“Do you think you’ll ever love again?” Brienne asked matter-of-factly, hitting Sansa with a question that seemed to be designed just to get a rise out of her.

Sansa knew this was just her job, but it was an insulting thought to have at all. If the other ghosts of her past couldn’t break her, then neither could Harry Hardyng. She was stronger than anything some dumbass man could do to her.

“Of course I’ll love again,” Sansa insisted. “I’m only twenty-six and this… getting dumped... it was horrible, but I know now that Harry wasn’t it for me. I have so much love to give, and someday, I’ll meet someone who deserves it. I'll be fine. I just need some time and a bucket of ice cream.”

Brienne nodded for a few moments before turning her attention to the other crew members in the car. “Okay, we’ve got it, guys.”

Suddenly, everyone seemed at ease.

The car pulled over after a few minutes, as if they had just been driving around aimlessly to get what they needed out of Sansa before returning to the hotel.

The red light on the cameras dimmed quickly, and Sansa felt herself tugged into another embrace, this one more welcome than the last. She relaxed into the hug and shuddered into Brienne’s shoulder, gripping onto her arms from their awkward positions across the seat from each other. They had never really spoken like true friends would before, aside from the occasional compliment and joke, but what they shared truly felt like friendship.

“Beth, Edd, get her bags,” Brienne ordered firmly, her voice soft for Sansa’s sake as she rubbed soothing circles around Sansa’s bag, the rough material of her shirt feeling like a preferable change to the uncomfortably hideous gown she was still wearing. Gods, she wanted to burn the thing.

Perhaps she would soon, but all she wanted right now was to go home.


	2. The Watch Party

“Margaery’s spectacular but I always knew she would be more than she let on.” Harry laughed with flushed cheeks and a trace of lipstick on the corner of his mouth, smirking as if he meant to torture Sansa with the knowledge that she had so severely misread his intentions. He ran a hand through his blond hair as the camera cut to Margaery pretending to wake up in his arms, though she knew from her own overnight date that it had probably been filmed after an hour of prep-work. He continued speaking as if he didn’t know how to stop. “It’s why I kept her around this long, to be honest, to see that... other side of her.”

It had been two months since filming wrapped and none of it hurt any less than it did when he took her hands in his and broke her heart after using her for all she could give him. This was what she had been dreading the most on her way home— having to watch her heartbreak back in HD and recognizing that nearly everyone she knew would be watching it as it aired. It was humiliating and it _hurt_. It hurt to watch him make meaningful connections with other girls; to watch him dance with Myrcella in an empty ballroom, kiss Missandei like she was the only person he had ever wanted to kiss, to laugh at Myranda's jokes like she was addictive.

It hurt worst to see how he looked at her, though, like the sun rose in her smile and set in her eyes. Like she did mean something to him after all, when all she wanted to see him as a villainous, cruel man who broke her heart like it was nothing. Instead, she had to watch them fall in love with each other as if she hadn't gone through the pain of living it for herself. It hurt to see him treat her with a care that he didn't treat anyone else with- to see every indication that he was going to choose her, only to know for a fact that he wouldn't. It hurt to know he had slept with Margaery (even though everyone had told her time and time again that the lead usually slept with other people) despite how he felt for her. It hurt to know she would have to watch him propose to Myranda before long.

“Asshole,” Sansa hurled her pillow at the screen when he started going on about how Margaery wasn’t ‘the type’ of girl that he was looking to settle down with; that she wasn't quite what he was looking for but he enjoyed his time with her, and that he wasn't sure that he could be with someone that he didn't truly understand. It didn't stop him from sleeping with her, but apparently it was important enough to him that he planned on sending her home before his next two dates even happened. Arya snickered as the cushion her sister chucked hit the very bottom of the television, knocking against a cupboard in the process of falling to the floor.

She was lying across the ottoman futon with a bowl full of popcorn set right in front of her, watching the show mostly to heckle Sansa's suitor whenever he appeared on-screen.

Robb rubbed at Sansa’s back comfortingly as she leaned against him on the couch, Jon sighing from her other side before he retreated into the kitchen to get himself and his girlfriend another glass of wine while Harry continued waxing on about how he was feeling and how stressed out he was by the prospect of having to choose. Jeyne called out to him to make sure that he poured her the rosé and not the red, to which he snorted but obliged.

She remembered when they first got together, right after her and Jeyne’s high school graduation. Sansa had thrown the largest tantrum in the history of tantrums upon seeing them making out in the Chili’s parking lot while the rest of her family was still ordering, just a stupid seventeen-year-old girl who was upset that the entire world didn’t revolve around her.

Their relationship was what ended up bonding Arya and Sansa closer together, both upset that their best friend was being taken away by someone that they hadn’t cared much for before. Eight years later and the pair of them were still sweet on each other, which was all Sansa could ask for whenever she thought about whatever stranger would end up being the love of her life, though at this point all she seemed to encounter was one prat after another.

She gave the couple an irritated sidelong glance as Jeyne took her glass from Jon and bopped him on the nose with a lone finger, giggling as he pulled her closer to him on the couch right next to Sansa. She was happy for them, she _was_, but it was hard to bear witness to anything romantic when she was in the middle of watching herself get humped and dumped on national television.

_Don’t be bitter_, she reminded herself as she took a long swig of her wine. With Robb on one side, Jeyne and Jon on the other, and Theon leaning against her from his spot on the ground in between her legs, she at least had some support. She appreciated that they had all rallied together to help her through this. This week was more difficult than the last, considering that this one was centered around intimacy and sex now that there were just three girls left in the running. Her brothers, sister, friends, and cousin made it a little more bearable.

None of them had watched anything from the Bachelor franchise until now, most of them thinking that the show was either stupid, scripted, or both. Now, it seemed to be an event that they not only watched, but commented and live-tweeted about, as the general audience slowly but surely turned against Harry.

Her mother and father honored her request not to watch the season, considering that the weepy shameless girl she had become in the ‘Bachelor Bubble’ was far from how she wanted them to perceive her, no matter that they had other means of watching the show if they ever wanted to. She trusted that they would keep to their word not to watch, though—or at the very least, her father would keep to his word and her mother would go out of her way to pretend she hadn’t snuck a peek of the season on her own time, even if it meant accidentally giving her own game away.

“What a fucking prick,” Theon backed her up as he did every week, angry on her behalf at her ex’s antics. He sloshed his glass of wine around and gestured wildly with disbelief. “Did he not think this shit would get put on television?”

She appreciated that he came over to watch this with the rest of the family every week, considering that production hadn’t even allowed him to stay in the house for Harry’s hometown visit. They had claimed that the family was already too large to include another addition to the household, just barely allowing Jon to stay on the premises, though she didn't see why it would be such a hassle to have Theon there in the background at the very least. Even so, she was in no position to argue.

Everyone else had hated Harry, even Rickon who barely spoke a word to him during the two hours that they had spent together, so she was sure Theon would have loathed him just like everyone else in her family had done.

“He’s really coming off as a douche, isn’t he?” Sansa mused, twirling one of Theon’s curls in between her fingers as she leaned back in her seat. She hadn’t expected much from this season but was pleasantly surprised by the edit they were giving him; usually, the show’s leads weren’t done this dirty as the season was airing, least of all when they actually ended up getting engaged by the end of the show. Had something happened behind the scenes to make them want to portray Harry in such a negative light? It seemed odd for a show that hyped up romance so much to not even try to make Myranda seem particularly important to Harry.

“Try not to sound so smug about it,” he chuckled as he tipped his head back, allowing Sansa to play with his hair as she pleased. “He’s probably in hiding right now from all the middle-aged Facebook mums who've got a mind to see his head on a spike.”

“You think?” Sansa grinned, glancing back up at the television after Theon flashed her another smirk and nodded confidently. She wasn’t sure whether he actually thought that or was just saying so to make her feel better, but she appreciated the sentiment behind it regardless.

Bran was tapping away on his phone, live-tweeting the events of the episode to the public’s watchful eye with no concern about the actual show that they were watching.

Thousands of viewers followed her family on social media to get some idea of where Sansa’s head was at now that Harry’s true colors were on full display, likely wanting to figure out the juicy details behind the season. She remembered seeing a conspiracy theory that she and Harry _had_ ended up together despite spoilers claiming otherwise (though how Reality Varys managed to get his hands on those, she had no clue) based on some quote her mum had mindlessly liked on Instagram. It was brutal, to have to be tagged in (and occasionally watch) romantic fan edits of her and the man who had broken her heart.

“I mean, Margaery’s great,” Harry insisted as his interview continued, spliced with a clip of Sansa putting her lipstick on in front of a mirrored dresser. Her eyeliner looked good, at the very least, and that was all she could really be grateful for. “She’s a bloody vision and she’s hot as hell, but I couldn't stop thinking about Sansa the whole time. But I mean, my brother always told me you've got to dip your spoon in all the pudding before you pick one to eat for the rest of your life, so uh..."

He laughed, an awkward sound the way that they edited it over a lingering silence, as if they had chopped off whatever he had said afterwards to amplify just how bizarre the statement says. No one in Sansa’s sitting room said anything to that, though she could feel the quiet fury radiating off of everyone surrounding her. Gods, that was one of the worst things anyone could have thought to say. What was Harry thinking? He hadn't been, probably, but it didn't do him much good now.

Like a proper idiot, Sansa’s beaming face came into view as she gave her own ITM, looking far younger than she felt right now.

“He just makes me feel like I’m on top of the world. I don’t know where our connection is leading, but…” the Sansa of the past dipped her head forward in an attempt to hide her smile, and looked up at the camera as if she was in a rom-com and not a literal nightmare brought to life. “I feel like it’s something good. I can’t imagine not being with him, you know? He’s so… perfect. We can talk to each other like we're Sansa and Harry, and not like anything's standing in our way.”

“That didn’t age well, huh?” Rickon piped up from where he was dangling off the side of the other couch, and it took all of Sansa’s effort not to march over to him and wring his stupid little neck. He was upside down, so knocking him off wouldn’t be too difficult.

“Shut your hole, Rickon,” Arya snapped instead, throwing a handful of popcorn at him that would likely later be kicked under the couch or left for their mother to clean up. Jon sometimes picked up after the others when they misbehaved, but he wasn’t feeling nearly as sorry for himself as he would have to be to consider doing it tonight. He was always a glutton for punishment on his more angsty days, though she supposed that came with the territory of being a Capricorn.

Their little brother blew a raspberry at Arya but held his tongue as Sansa kept speaking on the television screen, completely clueless to what was going to happen to her over the next few days. Gods, she should have just declined the offer to go on the show at all, but Jeyne had convinced her to give it a shot, just so she wouldn’t have a ‘what if’ moment watching the season back. If only she knew how it was going to end up in the long run.

Sansa couldn’t look away from the TV, glaring as Harry snuck up on her past self to gave her a tight hug from behind and pressed a kiss to her ear. She wanted to take her old body over and wrench herself away from him, to yell and scream and tell him what a piece of shit he was to his face. Instead, she had to sit through the show’s trademark romantic music swelling into a crescendo as the Sansa-that-used-to-be turned around to give Harry a searing kiss. 

Arya retched in time with the action. The Sansa on-screen smiled into the kiss, looping her arms around his neck as he pulled her closer to him.

It didn’t even feel like a memory of her own anymore, now more like she was intruding on someone else’s fantasy. 

“Every day with Sansa’s a new adventure,” Harry grinned as the camera focused back on him once more, the plain candles beside him lighting to create what would be romantic imagery if not for how much of a dickhead he had turned out to be. Gods, Sansa couldn’t wait to give him a piece of her mind at the reunion show. “She blows me away. There’s something about her that’s just… intoxicating. Our connection’s hard to describe. It's... special. I think I might love her. Is that crazy?” He laughed and looked to the right (at a producer, perhaps?) just to laugh nervously. "It's crazy, right? I think about her all the time, even when I'm with other girls."

Sansa winced, wondering how in the Seven Hells he would play that comment off to Myranda.

The camera cut back to their kiss, their smiles wide as they parted from it and leaned towards each other, seemingly oblivious to the cameras around them. At least her dress looked pretty; it was one she had borrowed from Missandei before the other woman had been cut from the show during the hometown dates, a flowing bright yellow gown that Sansa needed to make a note to return to her at some point. Perhaps she could text her for some brunch or something and use the missing outfit as an excuse to catch up. Would that be pathetic?

Panic bubbled up in Sansa as their fantasy suite date progressed, the montage of them running around and dancing through the streets like lovestruck idiots fading out to the spectacle of the night: the final dinner before the suitor decided whether he wanted to enter the fantasy suite with his girl or not. She knew that this date would end with an implication that they had sex (which they _had_ done three times) and a manufactured morning after shot of them in bed after an hour of hair and makeup. Gods, this was embarrassing. Sansa’s hands got clammy and suddenly, she was extremely aware of Theon between her legs, and Jon and Jeyne to her side, and Robb to her other side, and Rickon and Bran and Arya across the room, and Mum and Father all the way upstairs. At least Gendry wasn’t here, not having the time nor the patience to sit through an hour and a half of the Bachelor every Monday night, even for Sansa’s sake.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the edit of her first and last night with Harry Hardyng to be ambiguous enough that her family wouldn’t think she was some kind of slag that slept with a man she barely knew and called it ‘true love’ as she had done. She was stupid, _so_ stupid. Who was she kidding? They would know, and they would pity her, or they would judge her, and everything she feared would come to pass, because of course it would.

Sure enough, the date ended with them wrapped in each other’s arms, with Harry walking Sansa towards the king-sized bed provided for them without breaking their kiss. She remembered that the candles in the room smelled like strawberries, recalling just how perfect the night had been before he had gone and tainted all of it for her with that day on the beach. Sansa exhaled once a soft fade to black was put into place as Harry shut the door behind them with one hand.

She could feel Robb looking at her worriedly as the episode cut to commercial.

“I need more wine,” Sansa sighed, unwilling to have this conversation now with everyone’s concerned eyes on her. She just needed to distract herself with something, and her glass of wine was conveniently empty. Sansa kicked lightly at Theon’s elbow, urging him up off the ground before he stopped her with a hand to her knee. She looked at him inquisitively.

“I’ll get it for you,” Theon assured her as he got up off the ground, accompanying his words with a wink as if he was trying to make her laugh to get her mind off it. She smiled weakly at him, appreciating his own brand of caring a tad more than her eldest brother, who was looking at her as if he was about to swear a pledge to defend her honor or something equally ridiculous as that. “Don’t move a muscle, love.”

Theon took her wine glass from her gingerly and set off to the kitchen, browsing around for something to snack on while he moseyed about the wine cabinet.

This time, Sansa couldn’t bite back her smile when he struggled to balance his guacamole and bag of nacho chips in one hand, not having the sense to set them down before going about the task of uncorking a new bottle. He juggled his prizes like he was trying to play it off that his oversight was on purpose, and not just because he didn’t think it through.

It made her feel warm inside, to know that she inspired any sort of care from the boy who called her a ‘tattle-tale’ in elementary school and practically refused to speak with her for the first few years of his friendship with Robb. Their antagonism had stretched all the way through secondary school when he was the dumbass who ate all her favorite snacks and hogged the TV to play idiotic shooting games with Robb all day long. Although she had grown with Jon, and Arya had grown with Jeyne, it was odd (and a little frightening) to live with the knowledge that Theon Greyjoy was one of her best friends in the world.

He still got on her nerves sometimes, but then again, so did most people.

It made her happy to know that she still had a support system at home in not just her family, but in her friends, no matter what idiot or another broke her heart.

Sansa braced herself for the rest of the episode as Theon handed her the refilled glass and settled back into his spot in between her legs, his hand wrapping around her ankle as if to ground her back to reality. He patted it softly and when she glanced back down at him, he was smiling up at her and raising his own glass of white wine as if to cheers to her making it through the worst of the episode. Without hesitating, Sansa drank enough from her overflowing glass so that she could comfortably clink hers with his in a toast. 

She groaned aloud when the show included some dialogue that she and Harry had spoken while they were in bed together. Sansa was admittedly a little surprised that the mics had picked the audio up from where they had been discarded on the floor beside the bed but found herself feeling vindicated at him whispering to her accompanied with subtitles for clarification. Maybe the aftermath of this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” came a breathy voice she recognized as her own, and Sansa couldn’t help but begin to chug her Dornish wine in hopes that it would dull the reactions of her friends and relatives around her, be they shocked or cringing. Both, probably. 

She caught a whiff of guac as Theon cracked his container open to start feasting on his dinner of choice.

“I _know_ I’m in love with you,” came Harry’s voice, more pronounced than Sansa’s from proximity as a shuffling sound overtook the microphones for a moment. “I’m going to choose you, Sansa Stark. When I propose, it’s gonna be you and me. I promise. I don't think I can ever love anyone else like this, Sans. I know that now.”

Inexplicably, Sansa's heart caught in her throat and a warm feeling swept over her at the look in his eyes- starry and adoring and an unspoken reassurance that she hadn't just made it all up in her head. He looked like he meant every word of it, which just further prodded at the ache she felt where her heart was.

At that, a multitude of ‘what’ and ‘huh’s filled the room, the outrage quieted by Bran shushing everyone to hear what she said next.

“Really?” Sansa sounded shy, and she knew for a fact that she had said more to Harry that night, though she couldn’t remember what it was. It had likely ended up on the cutting room floor in exchange for the very crisp audio of Harry’s haunting promise to her, the cameras focusing in on the door that they were behind in lieu of filming the couple themselves, since they hadn't been let into the room after a certain point. "Don't say that to me if you don't mean it, Harry."

“Today, tomorrow, and every day after that. I’ll choose you every time.” He breathed back to her ardently.

A spiteful lurch rushed through Sansa’s body as she sipped at her wine, unable to keep herself from hoping that Myranda was watching the episode right now with her fiancé by her side. It was bad to pray for such a thing to happen, but she found herself willing them to _please just break up_ to spare her the pain of watching them together. A sad, lonely, pathetic part of her wished he was here with her, nudging his nose into her cheek as the Starks mocked them for their sappiness. 

But he wasn't. 

People would probably flood Myranda's DMs before long with hatred and cries of outrage about how her fiance had chosen the wrong woman, and social media mentions with whatever degree of scandal this would turn out to be. A promise like that could not be going over well for Harry, especially when –to Sansa’s pleasant surprise – it was being aired on television rather than just being swept under the rug. Everyone seemed to be reeling from the admission, even Bran, who looked up from his phone to stare at the television with disbelief, and Rickon who was gaping at Sansa like a zoo animal.

“Yikes,” Arya whistled under her breath before stuffing her mouth with more popcorn.

“That’s fucking rough,” Rickon agreed, shifting into an upright position on the couch now that the show had finally gotten his attention with its gossip-baiting ways.

“Language,” Jon reminded him dully, to which Jeyne pinched his arm and whispered for him to let Rickon be, and that he should be allowed to have his fun every once in a while. Without their parents in the room, Sansa saw no reason not to allow Rickon to just live his best life.

“Gods, he’s probably getting eaten alive for this on Twitter,” Robb proclaimed, though he made no move to unwrap his arm from where it was resting around Sansa’s shoulders to reach for his phone. They ignored the sickeningly sweet goodbyes that Harry was sharing with Sansa on the screen in favor of asking the real experts about the situation. “Bran?”

“Can confirm,” Bran flashed his phone in their direction quickly before chortling to himself, seeming to take as much amusement as everyone else was at Harry’s downfall. “They’re roasting him to the seven hells and back for what he said about Margaery anyways, but this topped it off. At myasforeverxoxo says that he is _so_ cancelled if he doesn’t pick you.”

Robb snickered to himself before squeezing Sansa’s shoulder in what was supposed to be comforting but just ended up jarring when paired with his words. “Can’t wait to beat his ass the next time I run into that guy. Our cousin’s from his city, you know. He should keep an eye out."

“So what,” Sansa drew her brows together in puzzlement at that random bit of information, seeing through it for what Robb really meant by the very thinly-veiled threat. “You’re going to go all the way to the Vale to hunt him down and beat him up?”

“That’s right,” Jon responded matter-of-factly, his smile building as Robb gestured to him as if to confirm plans they had made while Sansa wasn’t around. “We’ve got a game plan, don’t worry. We _did_ tell him we’d come after him if he ever hurt you, Sansa.”

“It’s what he deserves,” Theon affirmed, lolling his head back so that it rested on Sansa’s knee. “C’mon, you know we won’t rough him up that bad, Sans. Just enough to get the message across. Isn’t that right, Robb?”

“Exactly,” Robb nodded sagely as Harry started going on about his final date with Myranda, though no one in the room seemed to care much about it now that Sansa’s was over and done with.

“No,” Sansa glanced between her brother, his best friend, and her cousin as she attempted to defuse a situation that hadn’t even started happening yet. The three of them were some of the most impulsive people she knew, especially when they had some cause to be angry about. She wouldn’t let them get sued, or worse, arrested for trying to teach Harry a lesson.

Just at that moment, the show cut to Myranda and Harry chatting over their meal, hands linked and heads bowed as if they thought their voices could be obscured by intimacy. Sansa didn’t hate Myranda. She couldn’t, really. She had been so kind to her in the house, and they were all playing a game to win the same guy at the end of the day; she couldn’t fault Myranda for accepting a proposal when it was why they had gone on a show in the first place. She only wished that she wouldn’t have to spend the next few months seeing them be happy together all over social media and magazines while Sansa was alone.

“Why don’t any of you actually eat the food on your dates?” Robb asked curiously as the untouched food in front of the winning couple seemed to stick out more than ever, with chopped lettuce and brazed meat going completely ignored by the pair in question, “None of you even touch it. Don’t you get hungry?”

“They feed us before we go,” Sansa informed him, recalling the many times she had been holed up in a hotel before a one-on-one and given the option of getting whatever she was in the mood for. “I had chicken nuggets before mine. Usually we have to cook for ourselves, so they get us whatever we want when we’ve got a date coming up.”

“Why not just eat the food?” Robb narrowed his eyes as if trying to inspect the food for itself through their screen, even from a distance. “Is it fake?”

“No,” Sansa shrugged. She recalled Shae eating something from her plate in between primping and makeup touches on her very first date with Harry, though she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be doing that. The cameramen had to eat too though, surely. “The crew eats it, I think. They don’t want us to be chewing during the date because of the mics or something.”

“Huh,” Robb responded as the date progressed much in the same way that the last two had done.

Harry used different lines with them, to her slight surprise, and escorted them all into the fantasy suite as she expected he would, though he hadn’t made any sort of promise to Myranda or Margaery by the sound of it. Sansa wasn’t sure what to make of that realization, other than that something must have happened to change his mind if he truly had meant what he said to her. It didn’t matter anymore, though. He had still chosen to send her home at the end of the day.

When the show cut to commercial again, Sansa could feel the impatience rising in the room. Everyone just wanted to get on with their night and trash Harry to each other, but the rose ceremonies were often the best part of the show. Though they all knew how this one panned out given that Sansa had actually been there when it happened, her family seemed quite eager to see it go down. She found herself curious as well as to how Margaery would handle her limo exit, knowing full well that she was a prime candidate to be the next Bachelorette. She would be happy for her if she was, if not a little jealous that it wasn't her.

All Sansa could really hope for at this point was a spot on Paradise, not finding it in herself to expect anything more than she could realistically get, at this point. She wouldn’t get her hopes up for something just to have it dashed again. Maybe she would find love with one of Mya's other rejected contestants, or one of Margaery's cast-offs by the time her filming had wrapped and the summer show started up.

When the rose ceremony concluded and Margaery was sent home after sparing some choice words for a rather messy break-up with Harry in which he had outright told her he didn't love her. It was out of the sight of the final two women, but seemed like an empowering exit in itself as she got into the back of the black car. She looked even more beautiful on-screen, if that was even possible. Sansa still couldn’t believe that he had sent Margaery home over her or Myranda, considering how beloved Margaery seemed to be by the fanbase of the show and the girls she had competed against.

She was a little snakey, sure, but it seemed to be borne out of a desire to get closer to Harry rather than just to social climb. They were close enough friends at this point that she trusted Margaery had good intentions at the end of the day. She was one person Sansa planned on staying in touch with once everything was finally over.

Sansa blinked as Theon’s hand shot up to jostle Robb’s newly reacquired phone from his hands, laughing obnoxiously as it fell onto Sansa’s lap with a thump.

Robb rushed to retrieve it, but Sansa saw what was on the screen before he could take his phone back from her.

The Instagram messaging system flashed up at her accusingly and her jaw dropped once she got a good look at the username of the girl he had messaged, turning to face Robb with a hint of mischief in her eyes. Theon seemed to have done it on purpose, as Robb tried to kick his best friend in the side from the angle he was at. He kept trying to get at him until Sansa blocked his line of attack with a carefully placed movement of her left leg.

“Seriously?” Sansa asked bemusedly as her brother hid his eyes from her, sufficiently embarrassed by getting exposed for trying to make his move on a girl who probably had at least a thousand guys lurking around her direct messages. “You really just slid into her DMs? You know you could have just asked me to make an introduction, right?”

“Would you?” Robb’s eyes lit up at the prospect of getting to meet Margaery Tyrell in person after apparently drooling over her for the entire run of Harry’s season. “Sansa, please?”

She sighed, pretending to weigh her options before Oberyn Martell’s voice came over the television once more: “Next week, on the Bachelor… we’ve got our Women’s Tell All. All the shocking secrets, hookups, rumors, and gossip from Harry’s season. You’ll see the women he sent home confront Harry for the first time since their break up, and then, hang in for our two-part finale the week after.”

Sansa shrugged at her brother once the episode ended, trying to seem coy when she had every intention of introducing them. She didn’t know how much good it would do if Margaery ended up being the Bachelorette, but she supposed all of that would be made official in a matter of weeks now. And if it wasn’t Margaery… then what was the harm?

A small part of her hoped that they would reach out to her instead, just because of the humiliating way she had gotten dumped on television before. That would be one way to win her integrity and shame back from her last go at reality television, and would give her a plethora of guys to choose from. 

But it would probably never happen.

Robb pouted at her intolerably until she caved in and gave him a tepid 'maybe' to the request, knowing full well that she would do her best to find happiness for her brother if she couldn't get it for herself.

“Oi,” Arya shouted at Jon, the poor soul left in charge of the remote now that the episode had ended. All of them had yet to eat dinner, but Sansa was wine-drunk enough that she fancied she could go to bed now just fine if she wanted to. “Switch the channel before Love Island ends.”


	3. The Agreement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretend none of the contestants are related to each other (aka Willas/Margaery, Trystane/Oberyn, Myrcella/Jaime just for simplicity’s sake! The only canon families here are the Starks, the Tullys/Arryns, and Greyjoys right now. I made this chapter a little longer so we could get right to the first week of the Bachelorette next chapter!
> 
> Also sorry not sorry but I’m giving Bran a personality in this fic and no one can stop me. The mole idea was also inspired by Jesse Palmer’s season of The Bachelor- shoutout to Jenny S. for being married and still kissing her friend on the lips.

Talisa Maegyr’s brow arched in perfect time with the apology Harry was issuing to all of the contestants who had gotten back together for the Women Tell All event. Sansa just barely stifled a laugh as the girl’s eyes locked directly with the camera, shaking her head exasperatedly as if to say _can you believe this guy?_ while he rambled on and on. Talisa's black hair was parted down the side and she was wearing a dress Sansa was half sure belonged to one of the Jeynes, but she looked like one of the most beautiful women in the room. She wondered how he had let her go as early as he did, considering Sansa certainly wouldn't have.

He certainly wasn’t winning the audience over as he put his foot in his mouth repeatedly; the past thirty minutes had pretty much just been a roast of Harry Hardyng rather than hashing out the season’s drama. It was actually quite nice to see the girls banding together rather than ganging up on each other, for a change.

“Can I be completely honest?” Myrcella interrupted Harry’s apology, her blonde hair falling in ringlets around her face. She didn’t wait for a response before laying into him without mercy. “I don’t get why you think you’re entitled to our forgiveness. You said what you said and clearly didn’t regret it at the time. This,” she gestured between them as Harry looked on, distraught that they had turned against him, “doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like damage control to me, Harry.”

“You’re only sorry that you got caught,” Talisa backed her friend up as the camera panned to Doreah nodding with agreement. “And that’s the underlying problem here, Harry. You never once took our feelings into consideration when you said any of what you said. It was unacceptable, and quite frankly, extremely disappointing. You weren't looking for a wife on this show; you were playing the field and hurting feelings when you should have been serious about it.”

Each word seemed to register as a physical blow to Harry who looked more puppy-like by the second, and Sansa couldn’t help the slow smile that spread across her face at the sight of it. Gods, she couldn’t wait for her and Margaery to get a chance to rip into him soon.

The camera refocused on Oberyn Martell who was very poorly covering his shit-eating grin with a notecard as Harry glanced at him helplessly.

“I feel like you wasted all of our time,” Missandei leaned forward in her seat, smiling softly at the encouraging squeeze Roslin gave her hand, her eyes ablaze with purpose. “And if Margaery was here, I’m certain she would want us to call you out for the pig that you are. You chose to be an ass, Harry.”

At that, the audience burst into applause, the camera panning to several screaming fans who were wearing shirts that said ‘Team Missandei’ and ‘Naath Represent’ in support of her. Arya whooped along with them and Sansa fought not to eyeball her sister for her apparent investment in the show.

It was just another Monday night, though this one was more relaxed than the week before now that Sansa didn’t have fantasy suites to stress over anymore.

Robb was sprawled across the floor, a mostly-eaten bag of crisps next to him as he watched the show halfheartedly, and Arya was sitting on his back cross-legged in a ‘technique’ that she claimed would help his back pains some. Theon was fast asleep on the couch after a particularly long shift at Yara’s bar, having ridden the bus all the way from Deepwood Motte to get to Winterfell in time for the new episode, and Rickon was busying himself with his biology textbook, sighing every five minutes as if they were forcibly distracting him from his schoolwork and he couldn’t simply move rooms. Jeyne and Jon were out with Mum and Dad at some restaurant to celebrate their housewarming, and Bran was chiming in with his opinion every now and then from where he was seated next to Sansa.

It was comforting to be here, especially now that Jeyne had officially moved out of their flat. Sansa didn’t feel quite so lonely at her childhood home, least of all with all of her siblings gathered around her just like they had been ten years ago when they would fight over whether they would watch Hell’s Kitchen or Project Runway before bedtime.

“Ladies,” Harry started on-screen as if he thought he could salvage this. “I just want to-”

The blaring sound of Sansa’s ringtone snapped her out of the moment and she jumped in her seat as her phone vibrated from where it had been placed on the coffee table.

Oberyn Martell’s smirking face flashed across the screen and her heart skipped a beat.

The showrunner (some sour-sounding woman with a droll in her voice) had reached out to her a couple of days ago about the possibility of getting cast as either the lead for the other show or going on Paradise, but there had been no guarantees; if anything, the woman had sounded pessimistic about Sansa’s chances of scoring the part. Sansa floundered with her phone as it continued ringing, the sound rousing Theon from his nap and getting the attention of everyone who had been zoning out around her.

“Wait, how’s he calling you if he’s on the show there?” Rickon asked, smacking his lips as he shoveled chocolate pudding into his mouth despite the late hour of the night. She couldn’t move, realizing now that this conversation could probably define her entire future if it was about what she thought it was about. What other reason would Oberyn Martell have to call her in the middle of the night so soon after the producers had first approached her?

“It’s filmed in advance, dumbass,” Bran’s voice was monotone as he peered over Sansa’s shoulder to get a good look at the phone. “Well? Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Arya scrambled towards the remote controller, muting the television deftly before tossing the item haphazardly towards the couch. The soft ‘ow’ she heard from Theon upon the remote smacking against his face would have amused her if she wasn’t undergoing one of the biggest panic attacks in her life since getting dumped on national television. And no one had even seen the breakup for themselves yet.

“I…” Sansa reached towards her phone before withdrawing her hand again, letting it ring a moment longer while she gathered her thoughts as best as she could given the situation.

“If she’s not gonna answer, at least unmute the television,” Rickon complained, throwing his spoon in Theon’s direction as if their circumstances were his fault. “I don’t wanna miss them roasting him if all you’re gonna do is stare at it. Turn it back on already.”

“It’s on DVR, idiot,” Arya rolled her eyes at her brother before making eye contact with Sansa. For a moment, she thought her sister meant to comfort her in some way; those expectations were shot to the ground when Arya lunged forward and answered the call, swiftly pressing the speaker-phone button and shushing everyone in the room.

Her mouth suddenly felt dry.

“Sansa Stark!” Oberyn Martell’s face appeared on Facetime as Sansa struggled to get the phone back in her grasp, grinning exhaustedly as if she had been expecting this. She laughed airily and waved awkwardly at the television host, praying that her family had the sense to stay quiet for this. “I almost thought you weren’t going to answer.”

“I almost didn’t,” she joked, her smile fading as Rickon groaned to himself and let his head fall into his hands. Was that not the right thing to say? No one else looked particularly perturbed by Sansa’s poor attempt at humor and Oberyn didn’t seem to mind, as he chuckled politely and moved on with the conversation topic at hand.

“How have you been, Sansa?” His voice sounded as serious as he could be, though there was something simmering beneath it. Amusement, judgment, drunkenness—she couldn’t really tell when it came to Oberyn. Sansa tried not to get ahead of herself before he did so much as said ten words; everyone seemed to think that Margaery was a shoo-in for the position and if not her, Myrcella seemed to be beloved enough by the public that no one would think twice about the Bachelorette going to her. “Well, I’m hoping?”

“Yeah!” She tried not to cringe at how loudly she voiced her affirmation and humored the small talk he had started up with her. “How are you, Oberyn? Getting enough sleep?”

“Am I ever?” He countered wryly, grinning as he looked up at someone out of her vision. Was there a camera crew filming their talk? Her heart began pounding as he adjusted the phone somewhat, flashing a pearly smile at her as soon as his movements stopped.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Sansa. I trust Ryon and Myria have reached out to you already about your eh…” he trailed off for a moment and winked, the action lagging in an indication of her poor WiFi connection. “…_future_ with the franchise, let’s say. I know they’ve talked to you about the Bachelorette. You know that you’re on the list.”

“Yeah…” Sansa bit back a smile and tried to find a way to phrase herself so that she wouldn’t sound presumptuous. When she couldn’t, she settled on playing dumb so that she didn’t look vain if this was being filmed. Arya was breathing right beside her, eyes wide like an owl’s as her sister carefully crafted her response. “Yeah, I’ve really been looking forward to moving on from everything with Harry and uh... yeah.”

Rickon snickered to himself, letting out an _umph_ sound as Robb elbowed him in the side.

“What do you think?” She could hear the grin in Oberyn’s voice although his camera looked to have frozen up a little on her end. “Are you serious about this?”

Was this some kind of a test?

“I…” Sansa was having trouble breathing now, already imagining the possibilities that could arise for her if this was really happening. “I know my heart,” she settled on saying instead, “and I know what I want. And I know I’m ready for it, more than anyone.”

“What do you want?” He sounded almost like he was toying with her.

“This,” Sansa confirmed, her cheeks reddening somewhat as she realized that he was going to force her to say it out loud. What happened to cutting to the chase? The screen sped up again as his face started moving once more; he was cocking a brow up to her as if he was waiting for her to drop the bomb on all of them. “I want to be the Bachelorette.”

“Then I don’t see why you shouldn’t be,” Oberyn retorted as if he didn’t realize the weight of his own words. “Think you can handle it?”

“Yes,” Sansa affirmed confidently. “I can handle it.”

“Then it's yours,” he informed her smoothly and Sansa’s jaw slackened the slightest bit. Her breathing stuttered as a hand came up of its own accord to rest on her chest. Her heart was thumping, the sound of it almost louder than Oberyn Martell’s voice was; her throat suddenly felt blocked up and her nose pinched. Robb’s hand was covering his gaping mouth, and even Arya was practically bouncing in her seat with giddiness. The rest of them were all waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. “Sansa?”

“Seriously?” Sansa couldn’t help but ask, grinning so widely that her cheeks began to hurt from the effort. “Are you- Really? You’re asking me to be-”

“No,” Oberyn cut in and for a moment, she wondered how she could have so badly misread a situation. Before her thoughts could catch up with her and bring about the feelings of mortification that she knew were coming, he continued. “I’m _telling_ you that you’re our next Bachelorette. How does that make you feel, Sansa?”

“Oh my Gods,” the words left Sansa’s mouth as soon as he confirmed the thing she had been hoping for from the moment her phone had started ringing. “I- that makes me feel amazing, thank you. Thank you, thank you, I won’t- I won’t let you down. I really want this, I do. What-” she paused, her brows drawn together as Bran tried mouthing something to her that she couldn’t make out. “What do I need to do to uh… prepare?”

“I’ll put Brienne in touch with you soon,” Oberyn responded, sounding far more collected than she did. “She’ll give you a list of things to pack, about contact and pay negotiations—you will have to meet with our producers and with Justinia before we can make anything official, but it’s really just a formality, and go over _everything_ we need you to say at After the Final Rose and on Good Morning Westeros once it’s announced-”

“Wait,” Sansa cut in, sufficiently confused by his mention of the after-show special. Was she going to be scripted for events? “What do you guys need me to say?”

“You’re not just representing our brand, Sansa,” Oberyn grinned, his smile a bit tighter now that he had been interrupted. “You _are_ our brand. There are some things that you need to keep in mind when it comes to live television. Justinia can sort it out with you.”

That made sense, didn’t it? She glanced up at Arya for support and exhaled with relief at the thumbs up she received. There was no way she could say no to something like this, but it was nice to have the validation. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Good. Brienne will be contacting you shortly,” he smirked once more, the sight of this smile more genuine than the manufactured grin he’d had plastered on earlier. “Capeesh?” 

“Yes!” She squeaked out, nearly dropping her phone in the process of answering him. She was going to be the Bachelorette. All of Westeros was going to watch her get a second chance of love, and she was going to have thirty men to choose between, and it would be like the fairytale she had always imagined for herself. “Thank you again, Obe-”

The line had already gone dead by the time she got his name out, presumably because Oberyn Martell had better things to do than humor her blubbering. When she set the phone back down on the table shakily, she looked up to see her family watching her.

Arya broke the silence by screeching, leaping into the air and pulling Sansa up with her so that they could awkwardly hug around the table on the ground. Gods, Jeyne would lose her mind the moment Sansa got a chance to tell her about this. She was going to be the Bachelorette! She was going to get another chance of love on television, and she-

“You’re gonna be _famous_,” she hollered into Sansa’s ear as the Women Tell All kept playing silently behind them. Rickon joined in on the hug soon enough, and so did Robb, until they were practically a clump of Stark. She was practically suffocating and couldn’t stop the hysterical tears that began streaming down her face as she leaned into the embrace. This hadn’t ever seemed like a possibility to her, no matter which producers that had reached out to her; she just assumed that she would get a short-term summer fling at Paradise, if anything at all, but getting to be the _lead.._. This would be life-changing.

The group of them were only parted by the sound of a bottle being uncorked.

Sansa’s grin was only magnified by the sight of Theon with a cork in his mouth and champagne dripping down the bottle in his hand. He riskily poured a glass into one of the fancier cups that her parents reserved for guests, just managing not to spill any on the carpet before he held it up in the air. “I’m gonna make a speech now,” he toasted, though no one else had anything to raise in time with his theatrics. “To the next Bachelorette-”

“Shut up,” Sansa giggled as she extracted herself from the mostly-dissolved hug to zig-zag past the table so that she could throw herself into Theon’s arms, holding on tighter when he stumbled backward and laughed into her ear, champagne soaking their socks as they embraced. When they parted, he was still smiling as if to say _I’m proud of you_, and that was all Sansa could have asked for from any of them, especially from him. 

Stealing the bottle from Theon rather than the glass that he was holding out to her, she called out to her siblings from the entryway to the kitchen. “Let’s get drunk!”

Arya was the first to cheer, practically dodging every arm that shot out her way to get some of the stronger stuff from their parents’ liquor cabinet. Sansa winced as her sister unscrewed the full bottle of vodka, knowing full well that she and Robb had swapped it out for water back in high school. It was still fresh in her memory.

She could recall giggling as Robb poured enough vodka to tide them over for months into his flask—he was as careful as a scientist with his portions, pouring a little back in for extra measure before stuffing it back into the cabinet. The second time had been her own doing, having snuck it out for herself before a party with Jeyne so they could bring something to the pre-game (so that the upperclassmen would think they were cool, of course). The third time had been after her break-up with Joffrey, when Jon and Theon had set aside their differences to join Robb in comforting Sansa and saying- _hey, that guy was not worth it_. The fourth was a time she wasn’t present for in which Theon dared Robb to ‘drink it like water’ as if his heritage as a Tully could help him, and the fifth was at Robb’s graduation party. By that point, the noticeable lack of vodka in the bottle spun them both into a panic before they reached the ‘temporary’ solution of filling the bottle with water so that their parents would be none the wiser.

Nearly eight years later and it was still there. Sansa honestly blamed her parents; why even invest in so much alcohol if you’re barely going to drink it at all? She locked eyes with Robb knowingly, their shared secret passing between them as an inside joke that only they were privy to. It bonded them better than football and cheerleading, or the debate team, or student government ever could, especially now that they could just go to the nearest store and get a replacement bottle for themselves.

“Maybe not that one,” Robb laughed heartily, making his way over to the liquor cabinet briskly before plucking the bottle from a protesting Arya’s hands. “Try the bourbon.”

* * *

“He told me he was going to choose me, and I believed him,” The Sansa on-screen spoke over top b-roll footage of her getting into the black car before it focused in on the ITM she had given. “I opened up to him and he threw it back in my face. My heart is precious, and I have so much love to give. He wasn’t the one for me but maybe he never was.” The old Sansa smiled weakly at the camera as the car drove off, licking her lips before continuing. “Someday, I’ll find the person for me. The person I’m meant to be with.”

She scrunched her brows together at the phrasing, confident and hopeful and not at all like how she felt when that interview had been conducted. She didn’t remember saying a large chunk of that in that order, but she supposed it was better than her reality.

Sansa was clad in a black cocktail dress, hair curled so meticulously that she was a little frightened that it would break off. It was what her publicist—she still couldn’t believe that she had a _publicist_ now— told her to wear after getting her measurements, ensuring that a classy, traditional approach was what Westeros would want to see from her.

“Well done,” Margaery murmured from behind her, having just had her own confrontation with Harry before the last commercial break. They were both backstage, though Sansa had just been freed from the flock of makeup artists who touched her up before her entrance was supposed to come. “What are you going to say to him?”

Sansa smirked, wondering if Harry had anything more to fear than the wrath of the three women he had wronged throughout the show. The cheating allegations had been the nail in his coffin once the show wrapped; according to the tabloids, he had been photographed making out with random girls at bars and clubs while his new fiancée was none the wiser. For all that she had been angry with him for breaking her heart, none of it was Myranda’s fault. She didn’t deserve to be embarrassed like that any more than the rest of them. She wanted to give him a piece of her mind, and to tear into him out of spite.

They were supposed to have a catch-up brunch soon to celebrate dodging the Harry Hardyng bullet for good. Sansa was looking forward to rekindling her friendships with some of the girls in the house, especially now that they didn’t have to worry about the backstabbing that came with fourteen girls dating one guy at the same time.

“Don’t get too excited,” Sansa whispered back to Margaery as Oberyn started speaking again on-stage about how this would be the first time Harry and Sansa had seen each other since their break-up. If the Gods willed it, this would be the last time they ever had to see each other again. “I’ve got a script to stick to.”

Margaery’s laughter was tinkling, like windchimes, as she squeezed Sansa’s shoulder lightly. She smelled faintly like lavender and roses and for a moment, Sansa forgot where she was. “Of course you do. By the way… I wanted to ask you something.”

Sansa groaned aloud when her friend flashed her phone in Sansa’s direction with raised brows and laughter in her eyes, seemingly unaware of the secondhand embarrassment flooding through Sansa at the sight of the Instagram DM thread on the screen.

> **th3youngwolf**: do you like bagels
> 
> **margaerytyrell**: I do.
> 
> **th3youngwolf**: great bc you really are bae-goals
> 
> _read at 11:17 AM_

“That’s your brother, isn’t it?” Margaery asked as a producer Sansa had only met two or three times over the day—her name was also Jeyne from what she remembered of their meeting, thinking that it was quite funny that she shared the same name as her best friend— gave her a once over and smoothed out her hair in preparation of the surprise meeting. “He isn’t bad looking. Cute, actually, though his personality could use a little work.”

“Sansa,” the same producer barked out, wired by all the coffee she had been drinking before fetching the contestant. “Get over here. We need you out there in ten seconds.”

“To be continued,” her friend smiled at her coyly, readjusting Sansa’s hair so that one side was resting over her shoulder. She could only watch the movement, the realization that gods, she was going to see Harry and this was _live_ television finally beginning to set in as Oberyn called her name out to the sound of cheering women. “Good luck out there.”

Walking out onto the stage, Sansa was instantly blinded by the three spotlights that shone on her as some elevator music started playing, though it was drowned out by the screaming that was coming from the crowd. She waved awkwardly at one side of the audience as she stepped onto the stage, immediately catching sight of the suave host and the disgraced Bachelor waiting for her. Harry’s puppy-dog eyes had been brought out at full capacity, large and watery as they locked on Sansa. Gods, did she hate him.

Her smile felt plastered on as she locked eyes with Harry, expertly ignoring his attempt for a hug in favor for an elbow-touch and sitting down on the couch as far away from him as she could manage without coming off as petty. “Hi,” she mumbled, keeping the amicable smile on her face even as Harry turned to her with his crestfallen expression like it would do anything to endear him to her, like _anything_ could make her forgive him.

“How does it feel seeing Sansa for the first time since that day?” Oberyn asked Harry as Sansa squirmed in her seat, trying not to make eye contact with her ex as he stared at her.

“It feels good to see you,” he admitted as if he hadn’t planned his answer out in advance and Sansa fought not to grimace openly as he spouted off bullshit at her despite all the damage he had done. “I know that it’s been really hard for both of us since we… ended. I’ll never be able to make up to you, I know, but I want to apologize to you, deeply and truly, for everything I said. You deserved better than to be treated like that, especially by someone who loved you." He bit down on his lip and for a moment, she had to fight the inexplicable urge to cup his cheek and put a smile onto his face. "I never wanted to hurt you. And I'm sorry that I did."

“Do you have anything you want to ask Harry, Sansa?” Oberyn led her in.

No one could stop her if she wanted to go rogue, especially with Bran and Robb waiting in the audience for her and all of her contracts for the Bachelorette signed. But then again, did she really want to make an enemy out of the producers after she had witnessed firsthand how they destroyed Harry’s public image?

She wanted to grill him about why he lied to her, to scream at him and give him a piece of her mind, to slap him in his smug face just like she should have done at the dumping. Worst of all, she wanted to ask him if things would have been different with her- if he would have strayed if he had chosen her, as well, or if he had made the wrong call in choosing Myranda. She wanted to ask him why he had listened to his mother and not his heart; why he was sitting here, staring at her like she hung the moon and the stars all by herself and like he was fighting his own urges to leap forward and plead with her for another chance.

They were going to announce her as the next lead right after Myranda was brought out, towards the end of the show, but they could easily swap it around on her if she did something that they didn’t agree with. Would getting a petty moment of self-indulgence be worth sacrificing an opportunity like this? Would she hate herself for letting him go without letting him know how much damage he had done to her psyche and her heart?

Sansa smiled a false smile, one that Harry desperately returned without hesitance.

He never did know how to read her, she realized as his eyes lit up with hope. She had just blinded herself to his faults out of a desire to make him into what she wanted him to be. He had played her for a fool and that was no one’s fault but her own for not seeing the red flags for what they were. Of course, it was his fault too, but she was resolved to be more careful this time around.

Whoever she married would love her for her, not for clout or followers or her name, whether she found him on television or elsewhere.

“I just wanted to ask,” Sansa paused, looking down at her hands as she decided to comply with the network's request. “When did you know that it wasn’t me?”

* * *

Almost directly after After the Final Rose wrapped, Sansa barely had a moment to breathe before she was being ushered into the producers’ room with Brienne at her heels.

Despite giving her the initial news, Sansa noticed that Oberyn seemed to have very little to do with production itself, leaving most of the production to Justinia, the creator, and the showrunner that Sansa still had yet to meet until now. Now, she was standing in the middle of a too-bright office room on the upper level of the studio she had just been filming in, still clad in her formalwear, with two dozen eyes peering up at her.

Brienne nodded encouragingly at her before shuffling to the one empty chair at the long table in the center of the room, squeezing in beside Kevan and an older woman who Sansa had to assume was another member of the staff. She knew a lot of people had to work on the show for it to be this big, but never once did she think that there would be so many puppeteers behind the annual dating show. It was a little daunting.

“And the star appears,” a red-haired woman clapped her hands together and stood from the head of the long table in the center of the room. “Meet the production staff. You’re going to be seeing a lot of them. You’ve got Elissa, Brienne, and Barb as your main producers. Davos is your locational manager for the mansion site, but once we hit week three, you’re going to start traveling. For now, look at him. Memorize his face.”

Sansa complied easily enough, a little frightened by the woman’s piercing eyes. Her obedience seemed to satisfy who Sansa could only assume was the showrunner.

“I’m Melisandre, your showrunner. You won’t be seeing me much but you’ll be hearing about me even less if your producers do their jobs right. Production, this is Sansa Stark.”

A chorus of tepid ‘hi’ and ‘hello’s echoed through the room, the group of employees seeming just about as normal as anyone. Before she could do so much as start to individually introduce herself to them, Melisandre took the reins over again.

“We heard your concerns about screening the contestants better, but we aren’t Gods,” she started. “If someone isn’t upfront with us and it’s not something we can track down on social media, there isn’t much we can do. But we… value your trust in the process. After some brainstorming, we have an idea that might work for you.”

Sansa paused, trying to get a feel for the atmosphere in the room. No one seemed particularly tense or relaxed. She had voiced her reluctance to get embarrassed on television again when she had come into the Northern studio to sign her contract but hadn’t expected anything to come of it. She was quite honestly just surprised that they had put in the effort into considering her comfort in the process.

“Oh?” She asked, uncertain of how else she could respond.

“Elissa?” Melisandre gestured at the woman with graying blond hair at the table, who bore a certain resemblance to Sansa’s own mother from the angle she was sitting at. The showrunner sat down as the producer she called upon stood up in her place, a little stiff and clearly someone who put a decent amount of time and effort into her work.

“Miss Stark,” the woman nodded at her politely before glancing down at her note cards. “I suggested that we take an angle to our season that one Bachelor did during our third season, seventeen years ago. He entrusted a friend with being a… well, a mole, so to speak. Jenny spent the season spying on the other girls and reporting back to the suitor which ones she felt were being sincere and which ones were not.”

Sansa blinked, not having watched the show at the time considering that she had been about nine years old. It didn’t sound like a… _bad_ idea, per se, but she doubted that the audience would react well to such duplicity. “I don’t know about-”

“With all due respect, I wasn’t finished.” Elissa cut in, glaring daggers at Sansa as if this was the most important suggestion she had ever pitched in her life. “Applying this to your season would be difficult, what with social media and all. We would need your mole to scrub his accounts before casting and sign a non-disclosure agreement with the studio. You could carry your friend, whoever he may be, all the way to your top five and eliminate him before hometowns if you’re worried about the contestants’ intentions.”

This time, another producer spoke up from the other side of the room. “Would the audience know about him being a plant? I worry about their reception, Lisa. We can’t deny that Harry almost tanked everyone’s faith in the process-”

“Harry was an exception to the rule,” Melisandre cut in irritably. “Elissa, continue.”

“Well, my idea was this.” She started, eyes flicking over to where Sansa was still uncomfortably standing whereas everyone but her and Elissa were sitting. “We incorporate it as a mystery of the season. First night, Sansa meets the suitors. The mole pretends not to know her, impresses her, whatever, yada yada. The audience knows there’s a mole but they don’t know who. She takes him on a one-on-one, makes it convincing enough to get him to the top five with a few kisses here, some romance there- we can sort it out during the post-edit process. Then we reveal that it’s been him the whole time just as she’s sending him home. It’s a win-win for all of us. True love, mystery, friendship; it’s the whole package, and we could drag it out with marketing.”

She couldn’t deny that the concept of it sounded pretty fool-proof. There was a precedent for it, and it would ensure that she didn’t end up getting engaged to a tool by accident.

The guarantee that someone close to her would have her back throughout the process was a comfort to Sansa; as much as she liked Brienne, she knew that there was only so much she could tell her without jeopardizing her job in the process. Then again, the duplicity around it could reflect poorly on her, couldn’t it? And who would she even get to do such a thing for her convincingly? Save for Hodor, Theon, and Jojen Reed, there weren’t many men in her life that could fit the bill. Sansa worried her lower lip thinking about all the things that could go wrong. But was she willing to chance it at this point in the game?

“I’m on board if the Bachelorette is,” Melisandre announced to several hums of agreement sounding within the room. “You can take some time to think about it.”

“Can I?” Sansa asked immediately, knowing that she needed to sleep on it and discuss the implications of such a deal with her family before rushing into any decisions right now.

Melisandre pursed her lips before clasping her hands in front of her. “You have three days. Call me during my hours once you’ve made up your mind. Brienne will give you my card. Now…” raising her brows, she indicated for Sansa to leave so the production staff could carry on with whatever decisions they were making. “Great meeting you.”

* * *

“I can do it,” Jon offered as every eye in the dining room swiveled over to him disbelievingly. The entire family had come together to discuss the matter which everyone had agreed was the smartest move to ensure Sansa’s future happiness, as grudging as the acceptance was on her parents’ part to even see their daughter looking for love on a reality television show. The matter of 'who' was an issue no one could agree upon, though. Jon shifted with discomfort under the sudden scrutiny of every member of the Stark household. "What?"

Only Rickon continued digging into the steak Catelyn had prepared for their dinner.

“Dude,” Robb cut in, looking rather queasy at the prospect of the pair of them doing anything together. His mouth was downturned as his fork clattered against the plate he was scooping mashed potatoes off of, not quite sloshing the food off his plate but coming pretty close to it. “What the fuck?”

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Arya chimed in, to which Robb's expression lifted slightly. He gestured to her with his eyes as if to affirm that she was taking his side and not Jon's for once, mostly due to the implications of what he was suggesting. None of them wanted to watch Jon be intimate with Sansa in any capacity, even if it all was just fake. Sansa herself was silent, though her brows were furrowed as if she couldn't believe that such an idea could occur to Jon in the first place; they had never been close, though they were still practically siblings. Judging by the aghast look in his eyes, he hadn't thought it through either. “You’re basically our brother and in case you forgot, you’re _actually_ related to us. Besides, what about Jeyne?”

“Yes,” Jeyne glared daggers into the side of his head to which he shrunk with fear at the prospect of facing her fury. “What _about_ Jeyne?”

“You seriously want to date my sister?” Robb interrupted again, his momentary nausea replaced by anger. “Jon, I swear to all the gods-”

“I was just trying to be nice,” Jon exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air and shooting a pleading look at Ned before continuing with his defense once he realized his uncle wasn't going to save him now. It almost looked like there was a hint of mirth in Ned's eyes as he mouthed something to Catelyn, probably about the conversation at hand. Whatever he said was comforting enough that Catelyn went back to eating her meal with a roll of her eyes. “And I’m not trying to _date_ Sansa. That’s bloody wrong. I just thought I’d be able to keep a better eye on her than Jojen could. Besides, if Robin was an option, I figured kissing wouldn’t be part of-”

“Robin wasn’t an option,” Sansa jumped in, shooting her mother a look for even having suggested that she bring her bratty cousin on a dating show to protect her, as if the prat would even bother reporting back to her at all. “And I appreciate the sentiment, Jon, I do, but it can’t be you. It’s _not_ real but people would think it was weird if I brought my cousin onto the show. I need someone no one will suspect. We really don’t need my season to become a Flowers in the Attic special.”

At that, Arya snorted. Robb was still staring at her with an indiscernible look in his eyes.

“The network wouldn’t want to even risk bringing up incest anyways after what happened on Jaime’s season,” Bran stated matter-of-factly as if he was old enough to remember it (he wasn't), to which Sansa cringed. It seemed like every year seemed to spawn a new media spectacle, ranging from rumors of adultery to more taboo matters like incest. She recalled how fascinated the world was with Jaime and Cersei's tight-knit relationship, just a smidgen too close for people not to over-analyze. "Twincest was trending for weeks because of that, and Twitter wasn't even that big back then. It made People magazine too."

Before meeting him for herself, even Sansa had fallen victim to believing in every rumor she heard.

“He didn’t actually date his sister,” she felt the need to correct him for Jaime Lannister’s sake more than for trivia. Despite the rumors, the two had become estranged after the season, likely due to the disagreements that were had about Jaime even coming onto the show in the first place. When Sansa had asked him herself about what happened, he merely brushed the issue off with a sardonic smile and a vague comment or another about toxic relationships. “That was just a rumor Melara started when Cersei got her dumped during hometowns." Feeling the need to point out the obvious -and to defend her friend's relationship- she continued. "Besides, he chose Brienne at the end of it. Would a guy who’s dating his sister keep dating his producer for half a decade afterward?”

Bran conceded with a shrug, though he opened his mouth to respond. "Sometimes rumors have more truth to them than meets the eye, Sansa."

“Speaking of incest,” Robb started to which his mother shot him a nasty look for the conversational topic being changed so crassly. He seemed oblivious to the daggers she was staring into his forehead as he honed in on Jon again, jostling Theon in the side as if to get approval for the roast he was about to subject him to. A grin teased the edges of Robb's lips as he tried to keep himself from laughing. “Remember fourth grade when Dany convinced herself that Jon was gonna be her boyfriend and they had to call Aunt Lyanna into school ‘cause they wouldn’t stop kissing on the playground, and the teacher didn’t know how to get them to st-”

“Stop,” Jon looked pained at the very mention of it, despite the incident having occurred more than a decade ago when he hadn’t even realized that Dany was his aunt and not just a Very Good Friend that he got to hold hands with and pretend to date like his parents did. It wasn’t his nine-year-old self’s fault that she looked nothing like him, as he reminded everyone when they brought it up, especially Rhaenys who never seemed to let it go for long enough for Jon to forget about it. His siblings teased him for it as much as the Starks did, if not more, especially considering that it was a big enough deal that it warranted a parent-teacher conference and a light probationary period in which his teachers watched his and Dany's activity like a hawk. “Please, don’t.”

Robb guffawed then, unable to help himself. “Gods, Jon, it must be in your DNA if you’re thinking about-”

“Robb,” Jon groaned, a telltale blush covering his cheeks at the teasing that he was being subjected to, in spite of the mood lifting considerably. Jeyne locked eyes with Robb and mouthed something that had him shaking with laughter, the pair of them resolved to see Jon sufficiently mortified. “Please let it die.”

“What is dead may never die,” Theon chuckled into his glass when Jon looked around the table helplessly, his shoulders slumping slightly when he realized that Arya wasn't planning on saving him from being tormented, but rather intended on joining in. Jon’s hand clenched around his butter knife like he meant to hurl it at Theon for throwing his two cents in. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s just as well she’s dating my sister, isn’t it? Better her than you, I reckon.”

“But Dany’s more related to him than Sansa is, right?” Arya reached for her glass of wine thoughtfully, pondering the semantics of his hypothetical incest as Jon groaned with resignation that he was meant to continue suffering. “I guess it could be worse. At least it’s not Rhaenys, right? Now _that_ would be messed up.”

“Let it end,” Jon crossed his arms over his chest, shooting Jeyne a betrayed look when she voiced her agreement with Arya’s assessment of the situation. Her laughter was tinkling and her eyes crinkled with humor as her boyfriend reached for her hand, as if physical affection could goad her into sticking up for him and letting his poorly-thought through suggestion slip. “Please, I’m begging you.”

“I’m not saying he dated his sister,” Bran shrugged noncommittally, and though his debate with Sansa was all but forgotten in all the talk about schoolyard incest, he seemed determined to prolong the conversation. “But it's what everyone thought happened. Isn't that what counts on shows like this? They never show us the whole truth. Just bits and pieces of it to tell us who we should root for and who we should bully on Reddit. Either way, Jon couldn’t go on anyways. He’s got pictures on Instagram with you in them. People would figure it out immediately, especially since neither of you are private. It obviously can’t be any of us.”

Jon bumped Jeyne on the shoulder, pouting softly at her until she caved and bumped him back, whispering something to him under her breath that Sansa couldn’t make out. She could barely make out a soft 'you know I love you' on Jeyne's lips as she swiped a thumb over her partner's knuckles, brown eyes warm with affection. Times like this made her yearn more than ever for someone she could be so comfortable with; someone who would love her like Jeyne loved Jon.

She deflated with the silence that resounded through the room, figuring that the idea was too good to be true. If she was going to pull something like this off, she would have to do it with someone she truly trusted, not just whichever stranger was closest friends with one of her brothers. Perhaps Jojen wouldn’t have made the worst option, but he was too…

He just wasn’t someone that she could convincingly pretend to be interested in.

Just as her hope was waning, Robb jumped in. “What about Theon?”

Pausing with his fork lifted halfway to his mouth, Theon blinked. “What?”

"Theon?" Sansa huffed a laugh as soon as the suggestion was thrown out there. Sure, she had considered it when the proposal had first been made to her but Theon couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. She couldn't trust that he wouldn't run his mouth about being a spy as soon as he got a few glasses of champagne in him. Besides, he couldn’t even watch an episode of The Bachelor without ragging on it; how would he even act if he was actually on the show? She distinctly recalled the grief he gave her for even going on Harry's season in the first place and instantly, the prospect of him coming along with her seemed ridiculous. “No.”

At that, Theon looked a bit offended and straightened in his seat, eyebrows crashing together at Sansa’s swift rejection. “What’s wrong with me then?”

Sansa raised her eyebrows with disbelief as every curious eye at the table turned to her for an explanation, as if they were bracing themselves for an argument between the pair of them. They hadn't always been the best of friends, it was true, but she expected that they would have known better than to anticipate a deep roast coming on. “You really think I want to put you on a show that I believe in just so you can make fun of me the entire time and not help at all? Yeah, no thanks.”

Theon snorted and rolled his eyes just as she predicted he would. “It’s all made up, Sans. How am I supposed to take a show like that seriously?" He tilted his head, a fond smile flitting across his lips as he threw a casual wink her way, as if to antagonize her. "Of _course_ I’d make fun of you, love.”

“I’ve been on the show before, Theon,” she argued, setting her fork down in preparation for them to get into it like they always did as children. Perhaps she had miscalculated when she reasoned with herself that they were past the point of bickering over the dinner table. It wasn't fair of him to make such a claim when he didn't even know what it was like. “I know it’s real for a fact, and that’s exactly why I didn’t ask you to do this.”

“What would I get out of it if I did it, huh, Bran Bot?” Theon clicked his tongue to get Bran’s attention before returning his attention to Sansa. She was quietly fuming over his dismissal of a show he had supported her by rushing home to every week- the notion that he thought she was an idiot for it didn’t sit well with her. Catelyn sighed as the conversation progressed, seeming to accept that dinner was all but ruined now that the semantics of going on the show had been brought up by someone as skeptical as Theon. “It’s a dumb premise. Meet, hang out a couple of times for a month, and get engaged? It’s just not something real people do.”

“I almost did it,” Sansa set her cutlery down moodily, staring across the table at her friend as if challenging him to say something he would regret. Her words instantly seemed to strike discomfort within him, her eyes meeting his with unimpressed coldness. “Do you think I’m dumb?”

Almost instantly, Theon seemed to realize his error. “No, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“But you still won’t do the show?” Sansa asked, reaching for her fork and knife again so that she could at least cut into the broccoli stem she had been eyeing for the past hour, the sight of it annoying the daylights out of her. "And since you _don't_ think I'm dumb for doing it, you wouldn't have a problem with going on yourself, isn't that right?"

“Oh, so now you actually _want_ me to be your spy?” Theon pretended to think it through, tapping his chin as if deep in thought. “What’s in it for me?”

“A stipend, social media exposure, probably also girls once you're off the show,” Bran answered him as if he was bored at the direction the conversation had taken. Even Rickon seemed to just barely be entertaining himself by feeding Shaggydog scraps of streak under the table, still acting just as feral as he had been a decade prior. “These contestants get a lot of money for this. Ad revenue alone could generate up to six hundred thousand-”

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Theon complained, seemingly having heard enough. At that, every eye at the table locked on him confusedly. “But I _guess_ I could find it in my heart to do it for you, Sansa.”

A small smile threatened to quirk at Sansa’s lips. “I’m not making you do anything-”

“I guess I _have_ to if it’ll help you find love or whatever,” Theon drawled on, clearly trying to play it cool as everyone seemed to register the gravity of what he was offering to do. Then again, what were two chaste pecks on the lips and a month’s worth of traveling and free food if all he did was get more stuff out of it at the end? It wasn’t a bad deal at all, especially considering he would just be spending time getting to know whatever dickheads and melts tried wooing Sansa; there wasn’t anyone better than him for the job, really, considering the only other people who could do it well were related to her. “But you owe me big time.”

“You’ll do it then?” Sansa could barely restrain herself from grinning this time, nearly hurdling over her chair to get to gauge whether he was being for real or not. Other than him, what option did she have anymore? There wasn’t much point in finding someone else, considering Theon was removed enough from her that they could pretend they had just met for a while, and close enough that she could trust his opinion. “Theon?”

He sighed, long and deep, as if this was the hardest decision he had ever had to make. Before he could keep her waiting for long enough to annoy her, his eyes flicked up to meet hers and he cracked a surprisingly genuine smile. “I just said I would, didn’t I?”


	4. The Two of Cups

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a chapter that got way longer than I intended but the general layout of the next few chapters is jumping between two settings: 2/3 of the 'episode' is going to be BTS what's happening with Theon and Sansa as they're in the mansion, while the last third is several months later when the Starks and Co. are live-tweeting at home!

Theon left for the capital city a week before she did. The whole family saw him off at the harbor, hugging him goodbye and telling him to make them proud while he was away. None of them would be seeing him for the next few months, considering the lockdown the producers put on contestants post-show. Once his exit episode aired, he was free to return to the North. Until then though, he was required to keep a low profile so as to not spoil the ending of the show.

She appreciated that he put himself through seemingly countless meetings with the network's executives and even signed a non-disclosure agreement worth thousands of gold dragons, all to make sure that she could safely and securely find love on national television. She could never say he didn’t care, she supposed.

By the time he scrubbed his social media clean of any association with the Starks, Sansa felt more jittery than ever. There was no way to ensure that this plan would even work, let alone that it wouldn’t reflect poorly on either or both of them after the fact. If she learned anything from Harry, it was that public perception meant everything on this kind of show; one misstep and all of Westeros could decide they hated her, and her family would be getting hate-mail for years to come.

_Don’t sleep with anyone but your final guy_, Mya had told her when they met over drinks to discuss what was in for Sansa in her position. She had drawn on her own experiences in the rocky yet steadfast relationship she had going with the guy she had chosen from her season. Mya claimed that most girls knew who they were going to choose around the week where hometown dates happened. _Take it from me, you have to protect your relationship with that one. _

They had their game plan laid out; she would take Theon on a one-on-one once he had a good sense of how the guys in the mansion were, he would keep tabs on who she was most interested in, and she would let him go during the final five. That way she would have four (hopefully) decent men to choose from, and Theon would get all the perks that came with being a long-lasting contestant on the show.

If he played his cards right, he might even get to have a spot on Bachelor in Paradise. She couldn’t think of any girls from Harry’s season that would strike Theon’s fancy but then again, he hadn’t been serious about anyone in years. The last long-term relationship she could recall him in was during his last year of university with that girl who ended up leaving him to travel, but she supposed anything could happen. Perhaps this could be good for them both.

Her last week in Winterfell was spent reminiscing.

She wouldn’t see her home again for another five months. Even after the show wrapped, she wouldn’t be allowed home until every episode had aired. After that, she would also have a press tour to deal with and the Gods only knew how long that might take her. She made sure to spend enough time with each member of her family in the days prior to leaving, trying to make every day of her final week at home count.

Sunday was spent with her mother. They had gone to brunch first, getting embarrassingly drunk on mimosas that Catelyn insisted on treating her to, before staggering over to the closest mall to look for some more swimsuits. The producers had given her a list of things to pack, so she supposed that they would be hitting the beach more than one time. Hot tub dates also seemed to be a rather common occurrence, so it would look silly if she just wore the same bikini every day, wouldn’t it? They splurged on sunglasses and wraps alike, giggling as if they were teenage girls and not a grown woman and her equally-grown mother.

When Catelyn japed about Sansa wearing a thong on television, she didn’t think she had laughed so hard in her life. The thought of her getting one of those black boxes blurring out her arse made her just about lose her nerve, especially considering her mother had suggested it. By the time they stumbled home, she could barely even breathe without wheezing to herself. Neither of them could explain away their hangovers the next morning, but they took their pain in stride.

She went with Jeyne to Queenscrown the next day, where they got pistachio and lemon-flavored ice cream and rode the carousel just as they had done as little girls. It was where they had spent their first play date, back when their fathers urged them to play together while they talked about business at Winterfell. Sansa mounted the white horse with ease, giggling as Jeyne passed a group of laughing children to hop onto the spotted one fixed onto the machine beside her.

They held hands as the carousel whirled to life, remembering a simpler time while appreciating all that they had now. Sansa watched Jeyne carefully as she tipped her head back, laughing into the open air like a woman possessed, and loved her all the more for it. Even when they had their tiffs and disagreements, they were always best friends, always together through thick and thin. When they walked past the shops together as the sun set behind them, they were the same little girls they had always been.

And then came Tuesday.

Her father took her to a hockey game just like he had done when she was a child, and for all the distance that puberty had put between the two of them, they found a sort of kinship in good beer, hot dogs, and screaming over every point The Direwolves lost to The Stags. Clad in their matching jerseys with STARK emblazoned on the backs, they cheered their team on enthusiastically while Uncle Brandon slid across the field with all the intensity of a battle-worn soldier.

Ned drove them home afterward, his wolf-themed hat backward as he allowed her to tinker with the radio as she pleased.

It was always strange to see her father so carefree when he was typically so stern, but it was the perfect send-off where she was concerned. He glanced over at her as she lip-synced along with the pop song she had selected for them to listen to, bobbing his head along with the tune as if he actually enjoyed it—she appreciated his commitment to the harmless fib for her own benefit, though they maintained their comfortable silence for a time.

“Guard your heart, love,” he advised her after the song came to a close. She looked to him inquisitively to which he smiled gently at her, nothing but pride and slight melancholy seeping into his tone. “I only want to see you happy, Sansa.”

“I will,” she swore to him fervently. They would see each other sooner than the others, when it was time for her parents to meet her final two suitors just like every Bachelorette did. It was odd to think that she would likely be a week away from engagement when she saw him next, but neither of them commented on it. She knew better than to change his mind about something once it was made and he knew better than to criticize her choices after all she had been through already. “I’ll be home in no time.”

On Wednesday, she procured a bottle of tequila for Rickon against her better judgment.

She tried not to watch on with horror as her youngest brother poured half of the bottle into a blender, haphazardly drizzling some lemonade and orange juice into the contraption after it. He barely secured the top of the blender before pressing a button to prompt it to whirl to life.

“Margaritaaaas,” he jeered as Bran peeked over at them from over his laptop with annoyance. She couldn’t help her bark of laughter then, honestly just shocked at Rickon’s spontaneity. Perhaps it was why he had always gotten on so well with Arya into their teens. “C’mon, Sansa, help a little. Get the salt for me, will you?”

It wasn’t the worst margarita she had ever had, though it wasn’t the best by a long shot.

She eyeballed Rickon, making note of the ease with which he downed the drink. This definitely wasn’t his first rodeo, despite just barely being old enough to drink legally. Gods, she wished she had the same tolerance she used to have when she was his age. Now she could barely get three glasses of red wine down without feeling nauseous or worse, getting so tired she would curl up on her bed and take a nap.

They watched three movies back-to-back in the sitting room and continued drinking to their heart’s content, reminiscing about the messy childhood they shared in this house a lifetime ago. By the time midnight came around, they were both passed out on the floor until Shaggydog gave her a rude awakening in the form of slobbering all over her face. Her answering shriek was loud enough to wake the entire house, to which she dragged herself up to her old bedroom.

Just as her hand lingered over the doorknob, Rickon enveloped her in a sweet hug, now nearly a head taller than her (she supposed it was a little funny that the youngest of their pack had ended up being the tallest), murmuring something about looking out for the good guys and the cowboys before he trudged back to his own room, nearly colliding with his own door as he struggled to unlock it.

She went to sleep that night feeling secure and loved.

The next morning, Jon was waiting in his flat for her, clad in an apron and the most ridiculously oversized mittens she had ever seen on anyone in her life.

“Am I interrupting something?” She asked bemusedly as Lady uncharacteristically struggled against her leash to get a look at whatever it was that was smelling his apartment up. It smelled good. Sweet, almost like freshly made crepes. Jon was a surprisingly good cook, from what she had learned through family dinners.

At that, he mustered a smile and moved to shut the door behind her.

“You’re earlier than I expected, that’s all,” he returned to the kitchen as Ghost padded down the stairs excitedly to see his littermate again. The white dog sniffed at his sister’s nose before circling around her excitedly, nearly getting caught up on the leash Sansa had her own pup on. “You can take her off that.”

“Are you sure?” She asked him hesitantly, worried about what kind of damage the two dogs would be able to do to his newly furnished house if they were let loose. Jeyne would be furious if they broke her stuff so soon into moving, especially if they got their fur all over the floor and couches.

At that, Jon turned from where he was checking on the oven timer to level her with a disbelieving look. “It’s _Lady_. Of course I’m sure. Wouldn’t have offered to take her if I didn’t know she’d be a good influence on Ghost anyhow.”

She complied with his request quickly.

Sansa sat on the couch as he fiddled around in the kitchen, rolling her eyes when Ghost hopped up beside her, nudging his large snout onto her lap. She patted his coat of white hair absentmindedly as Lady investigated what was going to be her new home for the duration of the show.

It nearly broke her heart to have to leave her pet alone after already having been gone for so long, though her dog seemed to be none the wiser that her owner was planning on leaving again. Lady always loved Jeyne anyhow and Jon connected with all the wolves as well as he did with Ghost, so she could rest easy knowing that her pet would be loved in her absence. Still, it was difficult to say goodbye again.

She frowned as Lady tentatively stuck her nose into an opened cupboard, wishing she could just take the dog to the mansion with her.

“I made you lemon cakes,” Jon’s voice softly cut through her thoughts so abruptly that Sansa nearly jumped in her seat. Her cousin set a plate down on the coffee table in front of her, a hesitant smile on his face as he moved to sit on the part of the couch that was free of Ghost’s reign of terror. “Thought you might want a little piece of home before you leave. It’s still your favorite, right?”

Sansa stared down at the pastries, her heart melting a little bit at his thoughtfulness.

She had always been a brat to Jon when she was younger, mostly out of jealousy that both Robb and Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers whenever he would visit. It took a very shitty prom and an awkward curb-side side-hug for her to realize that Jon loved her as much as any of the other Starks, no matter how much she annoyed him or he grated on her nerves. She would trust him with her life if it came to that. 

They were family.

As Sansa popped one of the admittedly delicious treats into her mouth, she thanked her lucky stars that she had Jon in her life. They spent a few hours just like that, eating their cakes and reminiscing on the old couch he’d gotten back when he first moved in with Robb nearly six years ago.

With a last hug goodbye to both Jon and Lady, Sansa left his apartment with a full heart.

She met Bran for dinner and a tarot card reading next, breathing in the burnt sage as soon as they both settled in his room after a rather large meal of mac n' cheese. She shifted on his carpet, taking care not to jostle the multitude of crystals he had set for the event. She held the pale pink one tightly in her hand, the one that represented love and romance, and watched on as Bran carefully splayed out the cards she had chosen from his deck, pursing his lips as he got to the last one.

He surveyed the cards carefully before pointing to one of the ones closest to him. “The High Priestess. And it’s reversed, see? It means you’re risking letting other people control your life out of fear that you’ll make the wrong decisions.”

She shuttered for a moment. Did he mean the producers? When she voiced her thoughts aloud, Bran merely shrugged at her indifferently.

“I’m just doing the reading, Sansa. It’s saying that you have to listen to your inner voice and not what everyone around you wants you to do,” he pointed at another one thoughtfully. “You got the Tower in your relationship spread.”

“What does that mean?” Sansa asked dumbly, uncertain as to what a burning tower was supposed to tell her about her love life to come, and how she wasn’t supposed to be freaking out at the mental image that it was giving her already. That couldn't be good, could it?

“It means your romantic relationship is about to change. It’s been one shape and it’s about to take another,” he sighed as if the answer was obvious. “You’re going through something that’s going to change your dynamic with someone, but that you need to separate reality from fantasy to make this work. Be honest with yourself. Look at what's really there instead of what you or someone else wants you to see. Trust your gut.”

“So I need to be authentic with these guys,” Sansa wagered, playing along to get a better sense of direction for the weeks ahead of her. “And encourage honesty as soon as I get there because I want the real deal, not just some guy who pretends to be prince charming. Reality over fantasy. Is that it?”

“If that’s how you want to interpret it, sure,” Bran smirked at her as he pointed to another card. “Two of Cups. And it’s in the future position. You’re beginning a new bond and it’s looking good for you. It’s a slow build of intimacy, one that you can’t rush, but one that you also have to open your heart to embrace.”

“Are you just making this up as you go along?” Sansa couldn’t help the relieved smile budding at her lips, wondering if her brother had just staged all of this to get five silvers out of her and maybe offer her some comfort while he was at it. He looked annoyed at that question, which just made it harder not to laugh aloud, but she managed not to somehow. “Sorry, continue.”

“It’s about a connection, a friendship, a romance. If you haven’t met the person already, you will very soon.” He tapped the card again with his index finger, strands of brown hair falling into his eyes as the smell of incense wafted around them. “It’s a good sign, for sure.”

Her heart sped up a bit at the prospect of actually meeting the love of her life on this show. “What else?” She asked eagerly, practically slapping her finger onto the upside-down world. “What does this one mean?”

Bran’s eyes darted from the card, to her, to the card again. “Lack of closure.”

Immediately, Sansa thought about Harry and the frustration that built up within her as their segment on After the Final Rose came to an end and she was rushed off the stage to get ready for the announcement that she would be the next Bachelorette. What was she supposed to do, though? Sabotage her own chances of happiness for a moment of pettiness and self-righteousness with one of the worst players she had ever had the misfortune of dating?

“Someone exited your life abruptly and you’re left hanging in the balance, uncertain about what to do,” he murmured. “You have difficulty letting go of things and people, even when you know it’s time to just cut them off and move on already. You can’t achieve closure without putting an effort into finding it first, Sansa.”

“That’s not fair,” she interrupted, feeling indignance jump inside of her at the accusation the stupid tarot cards were hurling at her, however true they might be. “How am I even supposed to find closure at this point? As long as he’s out of my life now, doesn’t that mean I can move on and heal with time, or whatever?”

Bran shrugged again. “It’s your reading. Interpret it like you want.”

“Bran,” she whined, wanting answers and not just more riddles. “Come on.”

He sighed again as if he was an old oracle from the myths and legends, and not a graduate student living out of his parents’ home.

“Okay, well it’s connected to the past position here where you’ve got an upside-down devil," he looked up at her like she was supposed to know what that meant. "That means recovery from something in your past. You’re moving on and made a good choice that’s gonna set you up for the future, that you learned from.”

She thought of all the choices that card could be referring to for a moment before resolving not to dwell on the traumas and mistakes of her past. It was probably the one to accept the offer to be the Bachelorette, right?

“But this one,” Bran continued despite her attention clearly wandering elsewhere. “Means misdirection. So you might think you want one thing but you actually want another or, the more sinister option, that someone fools you into thinking that they’re what you want when really, they’re not. You have to see past it.”

“Okay,” Sansa cut in, feeling a tad overwhelmed now. “Can we take a break?”

By the time they smoked enough weed to incapacitate them for the night, she found that she hadn’t felt so optimistic about the prospect of finding love on television as she did right then. So what if she didn't have closure? She had a chance no other girl did. She lifted a slice of pizza to her lips, watching the specks on Bran’s ceiling, fancying that they looked a little like stars from a certain light. She always enjoyed spending time with Bran. It was always a nice reprieve from the chaos that came with being in Rickon, Arya or Robb’s company, especially when oftentimes, all she wanted was some peace and quiet.

“Sansa,” his voice broke her from her reverie as she swallowed the food in her mouth. “You’re gonna do good, you know. No matter what you do or who you pick. I’ll always be cheering you on. And I… you know I love you, right?”

She twisted so that she was laying on her side, grinning brightly at Bran as she licked the grease off her fingertips. “I love you too, weirdo.”

The next night was spent with both Robb and Arya, taking part in a pastime that she hadn’t even realized died out shortly after her younger sister graduated college. Her alcohol tolerance had dwindled somewhat, even in the debauchery that the week had brought her in anticipation for traveling to King’s Landing.

Arya slammed her glass down on the table as Robb impersonated his coworker to near-perfection, mocking Stannis Baratheon to the ends of the earth and back for whatever nonsense he had decided to spout off in the office that day. Gendry locked eyes with Sansa across the table as beer came spurting out of Arya’s nose, an amused smile stamped onto his face at the sight of his girlfriend practically doubled over in the middle of The Golden Kraken.

“Quit wasting my IPA, Stark,” Yara grumbled as she passed them on her way to another table and carelessly threw a handful of napkins in Arya’s direction, jerking her head towards the bar once she had everyone’s attention. “Need a chat with you real quick, Red. I’ll make it quick.”

At that, Sansa maneuvered her way out of her seat, patting Robb on the back gently as she squeezed behind him to follow Theon’s sister.

Yara hadn’t been shy about expressing her disapproval with the idea of him abandoning their bar and home for months just to be a glorified bodyguard for Sansa, but respected his choice to go nonetheless. He would get some free cash out of it anyway if he took advantage of the sponsors the contestants got afterward. 

“No Dany tonight?” Sansa asked, trying to make this conversation a little less awkward given that the only conversations she ever really had with Yara were drunkenly flirting with her until Theon got flustered enough with the interaction to put an end to it, usually through an elaborate set of YouTube tutorial videos about how to make the perfect omelet. “I don’t wanna miss her before I leave.”

Yara eyed her with that same look she always got whenever any Starks were in her vicinity, though she never kept it a secret that Rickon was her favorite of the lot of them. “Nah, but I’ll pass the message along. She’s doing some campaign thing at D-Stone.”

“Right,” Sansa offered her friend’s older sister a small smile. “Yara, I want to let-”

“Don’t let my brother get himself hurt, alright?” She interrupted Sansa, reaching for a glass to polish as a group of elderly women walked into the bar. “Keep an eye on him while he’s gone. He’s a right idiot half the time and I don’t want him coming back here all mopey and shit. Think you can manage it, Stark?”

She cracked a smile at her protectiveness. “Yeah, I’ve got him. He’s safe with me, I swear it.”

“Good,” Yara offered her a rare smirk as she left to get whatever cocktails the old women at the bar were planning on ordering. “I’ll hold you to that.”

* * *

The plane ride to King’s Landing wasn’t as unbearable as she thought it would be by a longshot.

It was almost worse the first time she had gone, back when she spent hours and hours stressing about how humiliated she would be if she was sent home on the very first night. This time, she just napped the whole way over, and her bags were some of the first to come through the baggage claim.

To her relief, Brienne was there to greet her at the airport.

As Sansa got into the backseat with her baggage piled up beside her and in the trunk, Jaime Lannister lifted his sunglasses and turned in the passenger seat to greet her. “I have to admit, I’m a little surprised you came back for round two.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say something encouraging?” Sansa’s brows drew together as Jaime’s green eyes glistened in the light of the evening sun while Brienne jammed her keys into the ignition of the SUV she had picked her up in. “That I’m going to find my soulmate or the love of my life or something? Or at least that it’s the time of my life, or that I should live life while I’m young?”

“Why should I?” Jaime lolled back in his seat, adjusting it so that he could lean back and limit Sansa’s leg room significantly. She tried not to grit her teeth, a little irritated that he _was_ just as annoying as the tabloids made him seem. She truly had to wonder what Brienne saw in him; perhaps love really was blind if it had worked out in their favor. “I’m not on their payroll.”

“Jaime,” Brienne warned him fondly, the smile evident in her tone of voice no matter how much she tried to be cross with him. “Behave yourself.”

“Yes dear,” Jaime chuckled, extending his arm out to rest on the back of Brienne’s seat as the car revved to life. “Live life while you’re young, Sansa.”

She tried not to huff at the word reversal, leaning back in her seat as they drove across the capital’s winding roads to get to the mansion. Before she could do so much as step out of the car, a team of makeup artists descended upon her, practically dragging her into the car with utterances of ‘you’re late’ and ‘finally’—she barely got to spare a glance for Brienne as she crossed the threshold of a mansion she could remember as clear as day.

Rather than the place where she met Harry, she associated it now with all the women she met during her stay there; Margaery, Missandei, Talisa, Roslin, Myrcella, Myranda, Doreah… they had been assigned beds and shoved in a room for a cocktail party when they first stepped foot in the house. She tried to imagine a room full of guys waiting for her, and hoped the appetizers at least were good for Theon’s sake. They were her favorite part of the cocktail parties when she had first been subjected to the hours that filming these parts took, especially the chicken nuggets and jalapeno poppers.

The makeup girls were in the process of applying a lip stain to her mouth in case she opted to kiss someone that evening when they were shoved aside by small hands with a surprising strength to them. A bottle of rose water clanked as it hit the ground, though the intruder didn’t seem to care about the mishap one bit.

“Shae!” Sansa squealed, launching herself out of the chair to hug the significantly shorter woman as she laughed. “Gods, I’ve missed you!”

“I was so happy when I found out, Sansa,” Shae pulled back and cupped Sansa’s cheeks with her hand. “I _knew_ it was going to be you from the start.”

“Shut up, you did not!” Sansa’s laughter persisted as she pulled Shae close to her, ignoring the cry of ‘candid!’ coming from across the room with a telltale flash of a phone camera to indicate that this was being documented for Instagram or Twitter later on. “I’m so glad you’re here, you don’t even know.”

“I never left,” the other woman smiled at her coyly as she placed a hand to Sansa’s shoulder, gently nudging her back to her seat. “Now… how do you feel about a smokey eye for tonight? Or are you feeling something more natural?”

She thought for a moment. “Something authentic. Something… me.”

Shae smiled sweetly as she reached for an eyeshadow palette to her left, grasping a tiny brush in her hands as she carefully slid it along the palest shade of cream and brought it to the rim of Sansa’s eye. “I know just the thing.”

* * *

“There’s one for every rose ceremony there is,” Willas explained awkwardly, though his nervousness endeared him to her a little. It made her feel better about her own racing pulse to know that the first guy out of the limo was just as scared of this experience as she was. He was wearing a black tuxedo suit, his warm honey-brown eyes shining as he looked at her with curiosity. She grasped the bouquet of roses he had handed to her in her hand as he continued speaking. “I want you to know that if I could, I’d give you one every time. And I’m really looking forward to getting to know you, Sansa.”

Sansa couldn’t help the flip her heart gave at the admission, flattered by the attention that was being showered on her. After a seemingly endless evening of makeup touches, camera tests, hair readjustments, and squeezing into the pale blue gown the producers approved (after four rejected ones) for introductions.

Her cheeks warmed when he leaned over to hug her, a little blown away at how good it felt to be the one in power here.

She was in control of his fate on the show, and the fate of every guy who came after him. Sansa inhaled as he pulled back from her, quite liking the way he smelled. It was some brand of fancy Southron cologne, she was pretty sure, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “I’ll see you inside.”

“I’ll see you,” he shot her one last smile before releasing her completely and heading towards the house. Sansa watched him leave, viscerally aware of the cameras pointed at her to document every twitch of her lips and expression she made. He was handsome with just a hint of stubble on his cheeks and a smile so soft it was like rainwater. This was good, wasn’t it? That she liked him already?

An intern darted forward to take the flowers from Sansa’s arms, depositing it into the arms of another intern with not so much as a word passing between any of them. She frowned for a moment before recognizing that it would be awkward to carry around a whole bouquet of roses for the entire night.

Besides, she had more people to meet.

Despite the breaks they took between each guy, she found it more and more difficult to keep track of their names.

She recalled Lancel, the blond one who performed the magic trick with the green fire, and Rakharo who presented her with a painted carving of Lady he had presumably made himself, but other than that, the last five men who had come up to her seemed to blend together.

“Here,” Brienne shoved a shot glass into Sansa’s hand. “It’s espresso.”

She threw her friend a grateful look before downing the coffee in one go, taking special care not to smudge her lipstick to spare herself another makeup check.

Before she could say anything, Brienne was telling someone in her headset to bring out the next guy, and directing the DP to aim the cameras in a certain direction. Sansa knew better than to interrupt her when she was at work, so she shifted between her feet, excited for whoever she would meet next.

A dark-haired man exited the limousine with an anxious energy about him that nearly made Sansa want to make a break for it. While Willas' nervousness was subtle and endearing, this man seemed to quake at the sight of her. He was wearing a navy blue suit with a tie that clearly looked like it had been tugged on a little to let him breathe.

Just as he was crossing the last step to get to her, he tripped over his own feet and nearly plummeted onto the ground.

Sansa’s hands shot forward uselessly, as though she could do anything to save him in the heels she was wearing, but he managed to catch himself right before he could actually make contact with the ground. When he looked up at her, his eyes were blown wide and his cheeks were flushed with embarrassment.

For a beat, no one said anything.

“It’s a good thing I fell for you already, huh?” He rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to make light of the situation. Immediately, he winced as the cliché of it all seemed to hit him. “Sorry, I was just-”

“I’m Sansa,” she held a hand out to him kindly, her smile widening as he immediately shook it with all the formality of a businessman. “Your turn.”

“What?” He asked, still shaking her hand though the time to let go had passed over five seconds earlier. He couldn’t be much older than she was, if not a little younger, but seemed genuine in how he was struggling to interact with her.

“Your name?” She offered to him, wondering if she had truly gone mad if she found this kind of floundering cute. Maybe she had and maybe she did. Then again, awkward was better than deceitful, sweet-talking, and dishonest, wasn’t it? He wasn't bad to look at either. 

“Oh, uh-” He laughed nervously. “Sorry, I’m making a- I’m Podrick. Podrick Payne, and I’m from the Westerlands, and I think you’re beautiful.”

She fought not to lower her gaze, thinking that all the pomp and circumstance from some of the other guys wilted in comparison to a phrase as simple as that. He was actually cute, though he was a little different from her usual type. Bran had told her to keep an open mind though, hadn't he?

Podrick. She would make sure to remember that one.

When he left, Sansa tried not to snap at the makeup girls who seemed to want to give her touch-ups every time the wind so much as blew into her face. It was frustrating and was causing the process to lengthen significantly, especially with reshots. She was getting a little cranky at this point, wishing she hadn’t chosen to wear such painful heels now that she had been in them for hours.

She caught sight of sandy-brown hair and instantly felt her stomach flip over with excitement.

Even if none of this ended up working out in her favor, at least it was something that she would be able to share with a lifelong friend. If anything, Theon would add a bit of personality into the house. He didn’t have to worry about eliminations and connections like the other guys did, and would surely be a welcome addition to the group of guys; as long as he cracked on with his stupid jokes, he was bound to gain some kind of following among the fanbase of the franchise. 

He was wearing a light brown suit; one she could have sworn he had worn for Arya’s graduation party when he held Sansa’s hair back as she vomited all over his trousers on her way to the toilet bowl. She had spent days apologizing profusely to him over the incident, to which he just laughed it off like he always did. He got her back by lauding it over her head for years afterward.

His grin was blinding as soon as he strode over to her, cameras trailing after and beside him in an attempt to capture everything on film. They would probably have to do the take again anyhow, but the cameramen here always seemed to treat every moment like it was their last.

Theon didn’t hesitate to greet her with a hug before presenting her with a box, standing close enough to her that she could smell the distinctly not-_Theon_ cologne someone had spritzed him with before his entrance. He pulled back, though she kept him grounded close to her with a hand to the elbow, instantly feeling better about tonight as long as she had him to fall back on. Even if all the other guys actually hated her, at least she could trust that Theon would look after her here.

“Hi. I’m Theon,” he tested, seeming to enjoy the mummery more than she thought he would. “And I come bearing gifts. They’re not lemon cakes, I know, but-”

“I _love_ macarons,” she exclaimed as she opened the box for herself to get a look at her loot. Theon watched with amusement as she plucked a bright pink one out of the box and popped it in her mouth, ignoring one of the producers’ groan of ‘don’t eat food while you’re mic-ed!’ from the other side of the pathway.

He snorted. “Yeah, I remember-”

“CUT!” Brienne shouted before turning to one of the lower-level producers standing beside her. She whispered something to the man before he scampered off in their direction, looking scared shitless to be talking to the contestants.

“Brienne says to watch yourself,” he struggled to look Theon in the eyes as he fidgeted nervously with his hands. “You don’t get second chances with the other contestants, so you have to remember that you two don’t know each other.” 

With that, he practically sprinted back to where his superior was pointing to a group of cameramen and giving them instructions of some sort.

Sansa caught Theon’s eye, dissolving into laughter at the way his lips twitched at the warning and only stopped once the crew looked annoyed enough to make her feel bad about wasting their time any more than she had to. They could do this.

“Okay, take two?” She whispered to him with a squeeze of his elbow. When he swiped the box of macarons away from her and blew her a kiss on his backward walk back to the limousine, she finished off the pink pastry and tried not to sigh when invasive hands poked at her face with brushes and applied some fruity-smelling spray to her hair again. Gods, this tediousness never seemed to end. At least the cocktail party would have some champagne.

“Hi,” Theon started again, leaning in for a hug once he got to her. “I got you something on my way here to uh- commemorate meeting you for the first time.”

She just barely restrained herself from laughing as he struggled with the box.

“I love macarons,” she chimed in just like she did last time to which Theon gave her a knowing look, one that said _I’m going to make fun of you for that later_, and pried the box open. “They’re like little dessert hamburgers.”

She reached for a yellow macaron and clinked it against the blue one Theon procured for himself, grinning as crumbs fell around them almost as if to mock the rose petals that accompanied half the dates she and Harry had been on during his own season of the show.

“A toast,” he started as he lifted the pastry up to his lips. “To new beginnings.”

“To new beginnings,” she echoed as he took a bite of her own, relishing in the taste of something so sweet after the chicken nuggets she had practically been force-fed while changing into her gown. She was _so_ hungry.

“I’ll see you inside, then,” he exchanged a secretive smile with her as she hugged him one last time and allowed him to follow all of the other guys into the house.

They were probably all watching the limo entrances just as she had done when it was her in the house, and Sansa found herself wondering which ones actually liked her. Willas and Podrick, for certain, and she had a feeling that Griff and Domeric were into her, as well. Gods, how was she even supposed to tell?

A whinny caught her attention before she could do so much as take a breather.

“Oh wow,” she said without thinking as a man wearing real armor galloped in on a white horse, veering off to the side so that she could get a good look at him.

Something about his energy seemed to exude confidence and Sansa tried not to think about how similar his vibe was to Harry Hardyng’s. This was a different guy who deserved as much a chance as anyone, and she would be lying if she said she didn’t swoon a little bit at the sight of a man with shoulders like _that_ coming onto a dating show to date her; it was like he was pulled straight from her fantasies as a nine-year-old girl with his coiffed brown hair and easy smile.

The horse was saddled by whoever the show had hired to take care of it as his feet hit the ground and he stiffly made his way over to her, doing his best to maintain his smile and posture despite the armor holding him back. She appreciated his commitment to the bit, especially given how uncomfortable it looked. Had he brought the armor himself or did production give it to him? How did they decide who to give the expensive gimmicks to? 

“I’ll be your knight in shining armor if you’ll let me,” he grinned at her and for a moment, Sansa nearly thought her heart would beat out of its chest. Gods, he was _attractive_. Her eyes widened as he pulled a decorative sword out from its sheath experimentally, digging it into the ground as he sunk to his knees. The metal of his armor creaked with the action. “I’m Dickon Tarly and I’ve come to offer you my heart,” he paused and tilted his head upward. “And my sword.”

“I’m honored,” Sansa played along, dipping into a curtsey like the ones her mum had taught her to do when she begged to learn how the ladies from all of Catelyn's favorite period dramas did it without tumbling to the ground. “And I gladly accept your pledge, Ser Dickon.”

“Then I look forward to seeing more of you,” he got off the ground and Sansa barely had time to second guess if that was a double-entendre before he was hugging her. The metal against her bare shoulders sent goosebumps up and down her arms, but the interaction only lasted a moment before he headed out.

The rest of the introduction seemed to rush by, all the way through gimmick after gimmick, until the last suitor raised her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to it that felt more intimate than it had any right to be. Her lips parted as the man drew back, brown eyes locked on hers as if he wanted to devour her whole.

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.

“What’s your name?” Her voice came out of its own accord, thankfully on autopilot when her brain decided to shut down without warning. He seemed well aware of the effect he was having on her as his grin stretched wider at the breathy tone of her question, his thumb swiping circles over her wrist gently.

“Trystane,” he answered smoothly before withdrawing from her. She almost called out to him to stay for reasons beyond her scope of understanding, when he spared a glance back at her. “We’ll talk in the mansion, I hope.”

“I would like that,” she responded to him, tingles coursing through her at the look he threw her on his way back into the mansion.

She just barely managed small talk with Oberyn about the introductions for the cameras, internally trying to categorize which guys to seek out during the cocktail party, trying to remember each of their names as best as she could. Brienne said she would have a board full of their names and pictures put up in her room, but it wasn’t like she would have a chance to get back before the first rose ceremony. Which ones would production want her to keep? Should she even listen to them when it came to which guys she should keep and eliminate? Would they do her dirty if she didn't heed their advice?

“Are you ready to get started?” Oberyn squeezed her shoulder with his hand.

She exhaled slowly, glancing back at the house where thirty men were probably trying to scope her out.

How many of them had signed up thinking they would get Margaery or Missandei, but would stay for the chance to get on Paradise or get more followers on social media? The prospect of falling for the wrong guy was terrifying to Sansa, so much so that she nearly considered asking the host of the show for a small break.

She had to do this, no matter how scary it was.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she responded with a smile, trying her best to feel at home in her position. If she acted confident, then she could trick herself into believing that she truly was ready to do this. She flashed Oberyn another grin as he offered her his arm, minding not to trip on her way there. “Let’s go.”

The guys were all waiting for her in the salon when Oberyn guided her into the mansion, eyes blinking back at her expectantly as if she should have prepared something to say to them. Gods, she thought she was going to get more guidance for this. Where was someone to make sure she wouldn’t fuck this up?

She caught sight of Trystane lounging on the couch, watching her carefully from his spot beside one of the Jons that had greeted her earlier, if she wasn’t mistaken. Her eyes roved over the group before stopping on Theon who gave her a subtle thumbs up as she addressed her season’s participants for the first time.

“I want to thank all of you for coming here to see me and for giving our respective connections a chance. I know what I’m looking for, and I’m looking for a partner who knows that about himself too. I’m looking for someone who’s honest,” Sansa clarified, thinking about Bran’s stupid cards for the twelfth time today and probably the hundredth time that week. “And for someone authentic. I want to see you for who you really are, not who you think I want to see. So I want to dedicate this first toast to opening your heart up to finding love.”

* * *

The music on the television took on a sillier note as the camera panned over to where Sansa and Theon were talking beside a fireplace.

There were two empty bottles of red wine laying on the ground beside the television in Winterfell, neglected despite Catelyn’s constant warnings over the course of the two-hour episode to clean it up so that it didn’t get Bran’s gaming console wet. The episode was nearly over but everyone was still as rowdy as ever each time it cut to commercial.

The show was still filming, from what Bran told the lot of them, and Sansa’s season would wrap in two weeks as the first episodes from her season aired. Not that it mattered, considering she wasn’t allowed to come home yet anyhow. Instead, all of them obsessively recorded every promotional video for the season that came up, whooping and hollering a week ago when Sansa’s first promo aired during a commercial break for Shark Tank, of her in a white romper sniffing a red rose.

So here they were, all scrunched together on a Monday night, watching on as Sansa greeted the guys vying either for her heart or Instagram fame (and also Theon) and schmoozed with them for nearly half an hour of run-time. The inordinate number of commercials was infuriating but they plowed through it nonetheless.

Gendry and Arya were sitting on the floor, backs against the bottom of the couch where Rickon was chowing down on the largest bowl of popcorn he could make for himself. Ned and Catelyn sat on the right side of their youngest son, watching on with thinly-disguised boredom and slight disapproval. Ned frowned every time Dickon Tarly did so much as smile in Sansa’s direction, though he didn’t comment at all on her prospects, even during the breaks themselves.

After uncomfortably commenting that Harry ‘had… qualities’ during Sansa’s hometown date, Ned had become something of a meme online, to which he merely grimaced and asked Bran to delete him off of the internet. Catelyn seemed a little more optimistic, though she commented more on the quality of Sansa’s outfits than any of the men who were there to win her heart. She didn’t believe in the ‘process’ even a fraction as much as Sansa did, but like all the Starks, was willing to give it a chance to support her daughter.

> **aryastark: **if one more guy tries a magic trick on her, im gonna drive to the mansion myself and dropkick him.
> 
> **robbbbstark: **hear hear the only one worth anything was the guy who made her lady 2.0 #rakharoftw
> 
> **jeynepoolesxx:** why do all the guys look so much worse in their promo shots than they do on tv #thebachelorette

“You’ve gotta try it,” Theon held the little roll up between his fingers as he gestured for Sansa to take a bite of it. “It’s got, like, prosciutto and olives in it. I smuggled like twelve over here so the guys wouldn’t eat them before you did.”

Gendry cocked his head as his sort-of friend unveiled a dozen stolen hors d’oeuvres to Sansa from his pockets on television. “They do look pretty good.”

“I know, right?” Rickon piped up from behind him, practically salivating at the sight of food. “Most of the food looks like garbage but that looks fucking deli-”

“Rickon,” Catelyn scolded her son half-heartedly as she took a sip from her wine, burrowing deeper into her husband’s arms despite their children retching at the public display of affection when Ned kissed their mum’s forehead. “Language.”

Robb snickered as Theon clumsily fed Sansa the finger-food on-screen, getting mayo all over her chin as he prattled on about the quality and texture of the ham itself. Gods, was he good at working an audience in the 'class clown' trope. Between that and the reaction gif that was being posted on Twitter of him chugging champagne during an ITM about his ‘first impression’ on Sansa, he wasn’t doing too bad for himself.

“Just found another conspiracy theory about why Podrick’s the mole,” Bran announced as he held his phone up to a Reddit thread. “It’s got a hundred upvotes. The next most popular one’s that there’s no mole and they’re just duping the audience into thinking there is one to generate more viewers.”

Arya snorted, swinging her feet over Gendry’s lap as soon as she got uncomfortable with sitting still in one place for too long. “Gods, you’d think someone from our high school would’ve spilled the beans by now.”

“I know, right?” Robb laughed openly, glad to have a breather from having to watch Sansa make out with anyone this time.

At least with Theon, he knew they’d just be dicking around and eating food; watching his sister practically straddle Trystane during their 'conversation' near that same fireplace and make out with the white knight guy on the balcony was unpleasant, to say the least.

> **aryastark: **there’s like three decent guys this season so I guess that’s that
> 
> **thebranbot420: **im glad my sister’s embracing her sexuality but jeez, did I have to see that ass grab with trystane with my own two eyes? at least blur it out for my sake @thebacheloretteabc
> 
> **rickstarks: **@sansastark if you can read this, just know dad’s rubbing his face and looking grim af at watching that one guy squeeze ur ass on the first day. hope u bring that one home #teamtrystane

“Ooh, guys!” Jeyne interrupted everyone as Sansa came into focus during her in-the-moment interview. She nearly hit Jon in the face with how wildly she was flailing her hands around, by far the most invested person in the room in the show. “Shut up, you all! She’s gonna give the first impression rose out.”

“Willas? Can I pull you for a second?” Sansa asked, her voice taking on the same tone it would whenever she tried flirting with the cute boy who taught her SoulCycle class back up North. The guy in question complied quickly, taking her hand as she led him into a more private room.

“Of course, I’m nervous,” Willas’ reddened face came up in his ITM as he grinned. ‘WILLAS, 34, ARCHITECT’ flashed on a banner under him, to which Bran updated his spreadsheet of contestants to keep track of. “I mean, there’s this beautiful girl asking to pull _me_ aside and I’m just freaking out and praying she doesn’t just send me home right now. Is it crazy that I really like her already?”

“Yeah, probably,” Jon answered the rhetorical question aloud, eyebrows drawn together as the pair settled beside the loveseat on television, the mood lighting tipping pretty much everyone off to the fact that something romantic would probably happen.

> **thebranbot420:** fun fact! the last four bachelorettes chose the guy they gave their first impression rose to 👀 #thebachelorette

“I really liked our talk earlier tonight,” Sansa started shyly, reaching over to a small table where a rose-pin contraption was waiting for her. She spun the object around in her hands nervously. “You really stood out to me today, Willas, and I was wondering if you would accept my first impression rose.”

Romantic music swelled in the background as Willas nodded eagerly to her request. “Yeah, I- Of course I will, Sansa.”

They exchanged smiles as she pinned the rose onto him with ease (were those magnets?) and the entire room collectively shielded their eyes when he cupped her cheek and drew her in for a soft kiss. Admittedly, it was a lot shorter than her other two but it was still too long where any of the Starks were concerned. The sound of slurpy kissing was too loud for any of them to bear, a lot more ASMR-y than anyone would have liked.

> **robbbbstark: **thanks for traumatizing me @sansastark
> 
> **margaerytyrell (replying to robbbbstark): **just you wait until fantasy suites 😏

“Robb, did you see-” Bran started before Robb cut him off, eyes glued to his phone screen as the Bachelorette cut to commercial.

“Yeah, I saw,” he refreshed the notification over and over again as if he thought it might disappear before turning to look at his cousin helplessly. “Jon, how the fuck do I get a beautiful girl that thousands of guys are into and is _way_ out of my league to fall in love with me?”

“Just ‘cause I got a girlfriend doesn’t mean I know how I did it, sorry.” Jon sighed apologetically as Jeyne twirled a lock of his hair around her finger, the display of affection nearly as bad as Ned and Catelyn were with their snuggling. “Try Yahoo Answers or something, I don’t know. Or try responding to her? DMing her?”

“What do I say?” Robb pressed, needing something organic to say to her and coming up blank. When Jon groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, it was all but a losing battle at that point. Arya watched them with annoyance as the episode flicked back on, leading into a short recap of Sansa’s evening by Oberyn Martell, including every gross kiss she shared. “I already DMed her once and she left me on read. C’mon, dude, please. I’d do it for you.”

> **aryastark: **@margaerytyrell put my brother out of his misery and dm him already he’s driving me crazy talking abt how hot u are.

“Arya!” Robb exclaimed, practically beet red as he leaped out of his seat onto the carpeted floor. “Seven Hells, delete that! Right now!”

“Oi,” Rickon shouted at him as Sansa took her place in front of all the men in whatever room of the mansion was devoted to rose ceremonies. He made a shooing gesture with his hands. “Move out of the way, you’re blocking the TV.”

“Dunno why you’re throwing a fit,” Arya deadpanned, playing with the lint of Gendry’s sweatshirt rather than paying her brother any mind. “You asked for help and I gave it. If she’s into you, she’ll DM you. If not, it’s whatever.”

“It’s whatever?” Robb repeated, in the midst of a breakdown as Sansa spoke on-screen about how tough the decision would be to cut a handful of guys. Even Catelyn Stark seemed annoyed at the distraction now. “This is my life, Arya! Take it down before she sees it! I swear to all the gods that-”

“She already liked my post,” Arya drawled as she reached into Rickon’s tub of popcorn. “So you’re just gonna look worse if I take it down now.”

“No,” Robb moaned as he sank back into his seat, just barely comforted by a hand on his back. He put his head between his knees dramatically, to which his father laughed at his antics, making a comment about ‘young love’ that only served to embarrass him further. “Gods, Arya, I’m going to _die_.”

“Die after the show’s over,” Jeyne griped at him, holding a pillow up menacingly as if she meant to whack him with it. “And shut up for the rest of the episode.”

“Trystane,” Sansa smiled shyly as she held her second rose of the night out. The man in question grinned, advancing towards her in a way that somehow made him look attractive when it should have made him look ridiculous. He stood closer to her than absolutely necessary, but the starstruck look in Sansa’s eyes seemed to indicate that she didn’t mind their proximity one bit. “Will you accept this rose?”

“Always,” he murmured back at her, to which she gifted him with another smile and pinned the rose to his jacket-pocket. When he kissed her cheek before heading back into position, the camera panned back over to the other men who looked nervous now that two roses had already been distributed.

“Asher,” she spoke next with certainty to which a beefy blond man came into focus, striding forward as if he hadn’t been worried one bit about getting chosen. He hadn’t been shown much throughout the episode, though it was hard to get everyone in when there were thirty guys to show. “Will you accept this rose?”

“I’d love to,” he smirked at her as she pinned the flower onto him.

> **aryastark: **big fan of asher. @thebacheloretteabc if my sister doesn’t want him, can you send me his number?
> 
> **gendryofthewaters (replying to aryastark): **…
> 
> **aryastark: **love u babe

“Podrick,” Sansa beckoned the guy who tripped forward, her smile widening as he fumbled over the ‘yes’ that he answered her question with. A few others followed that no one in the household had paid much attention to; Daryn, Desmond, Hugh, Jon. F, Jon B., Jasper, Leo, Owen… Gods, there were a lot of them.

> **aryastark: **how does she even remember all their names #thebachelorette

“Dickon,” she stated to which the camera panned over to a number of other guys looking annoyed to varying degrees, probably because of the white horse stunt from earlier. The man stepped forward, clearly having eyes for Sansa despite the drama he had already caused by entering the house the way he did. He stopped in front of her with a sheepish grin. “Will you accept this rose?”

“Absolutely,” he affirmed as she placed the rose onto his pocket, leaning forward to hug him swiftly before moving on to the next guy. Sansa had once told all of them that the rose ceremonies took hours to film on Harry's season, so this was probably no different. When he settled back into his place, Sansa called out the next guys. Edric, Colin, Griff, Rakkharo. They were all hot enough, but not particularly memorable yet.

> **rickstarks: **what happens if one of them says no does she just pick again
> 
> **thebranbot420: **if any of them did, I doubt they’d actually air it
> 
> **rickstarks: **lame

“Theon,” Sansa’s voice came out crystal clear on-screen to which everyone began alternating between roasting his outfit and whooping that he had made it another week on the show, despite knowing when he would get cut.

Theon stopped in front of her, all smiles, and when she asked him the pressing question, he nodded as coolly as he could in spite of his shit-eating grin. When he actually responded to her, however, the camera zoomed in on several other men’s faces in the crowd of men who had and had not been given roses.

“Yeah, I guess.” At the silence and Sansa’s burgeoning smile, he corrected himself quickly. “I mean yeah. I’d love to uh… accept the rose.”

Sansa pinned the rose onto him with a hearty laugh and hugged him briskly before releasing him to call on her last guy, Lancel.

Once that was over and done with and the losing guys filmed their parting comments (some of them a little crazy-sounding and others feigning heartbreak for a chance to get on Paradise), a preview for the rest of the season aired.

The clips were spliced together so quickly that they could barely make out what was happening; Sansa was making out with one guy in a hot tub, and then with another guy in a marketplace, and then another guy in a sauna, and was going skydiving, and then Dickon was yelling at Willas who was watching him with barely-disguised contempt, and then came Theon’s voice over footage of Sansa crying into her hands as a car drove away. “This is real, you know? It’s her heart we’re talking about.” Another clip of Sansa on top of some guy on a bed, and then one of her laughing at the head of a boat showed as Oberyn professed the season to be the most dramatic one yet. As the screen faded to black, it seemed that everyone had gone to Twitter to air their opinions about the episode.

> **margaerytyrell:** So proud of my girl @sansastark. #TheBachelorette
> 
> **harroldhardyngjr:** Very proud of Sansa tonight. She has a great group of guys this season! Very entertaining episode of #TheBachelorette
> 
> **jsnowsghost (replying to harroldhardyngjr):** [monkey puppet side eye meme]
> 
> **aryastark (replying to harroldhardyngjr):** stfu
> 
> **talisasmaegyrr (replying to harroldhardyngjr): **You don’t stop for one second, do you? #HarryHardyngMustDie
> 
> **roslinfreys (replying to harroldhardyngjr): **Woooooow.
> 
> **margaerytyrell (replying to roslinfreys and talisasmaegyrr):** [GIF of Margaery throwing her champagne at Harry from ATFR]
> 
> ** robbbbstark retweeted this**
> 
> **robbbbstark: **Strong start, sis! #TheBachelorette #TheBESTBachelorette
> 
> ** margaerytyrell retweeted this**


	5. Week One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys! With midterms coming up and my workload getting heavier, this is going to be the last chapter I get to you guys for a little while. I should begin updating this and ‘the strangers in your head’ by the beginning of November or (worst case scenario) over the month of December once I’m on break. 
> 
> I love you guys and writing is such a peaceful thing for me but I can’t risk failing out of grad school so… I hope you guys can be patient for the next few weeks. I appreciate you all!
> 
> I made this chapter EXTRA long for you guys and I know some controversial stuff happens in here, but... this is The Bachelorette. I want to stay true to the premise of the show by having our lead (Sansa) form connections with multiple people. You know what your endgame is so... hang on and please don't hate me!

Life in the mansion wasn’t so bad outside of the initial stir-crazy ‘holy shit we’re trapped in here’ realization and subsequent meltdowns most of the guys went through when their electronics were first confiscated from them. They didn’t have phones, music, or books aside from the Seven-Pointed Star at their disposal.

Sansa told him that the no telly thing eased up when they were closer to the end, so he supposed he had shitty hotel room movies and soaps to look forward to.

There were no gyms to work out in so aside from the cooking they did in the kitchen with the groceries the production staff provided for them, all they were really allowed to do was chat with each other and drink to their heart’s content. Some of them were already cracking under the pressure. It was only their third day in the mansion and half these guys already fancied themselves obsessed with Sansa by the way they were raving about how hot she looked the night of introductions.

She wasn’t around, to Theon’s dismay, so all he could do to bide his time was lounge around the house and hope the lads here weren’t total loons.

They were going to be on television, though, so there were bound to be a few crazies.

He wasn’t too bothered by the constraints of being here considering he wasn’t a real contestant; some producer or another would probably let him sneak a peek at Twitter if he got them alone. Besides, this was practically a free vacation that would rack up enough buzz for him to squeeze a few months of rent out of it.

“Are we ever going to actually get to talk to her?” Asher sighed exhaustedly as he plopped down next to Theon on the cream-colored chaise. He immediately took up as much space as he could, confident as ever in a way that came off as surprisingly entertaining rather than gratingly annoying like it would be if someone else did it. “Or are they trying to drive us up the wall by shutting us in here? Feels like we’re a bloody lab experiment.”

Theon snorted a laugh, so bored that anything seemed amusing at this point.

“Dunno, man,” he glanced at the blond man beside him and tried to play it like he wasn’t thinking about raiding the fridge for salami the minute he got away from this conversation. “Think they’re just waiting for a fight to break out.”

“Who d’you reckon it’ll be?” Asher flashed him a pearly smile, an almost dangerous edge to it. He didn’t strike Theon as Sansa’s type, though he seemed decent enough to get to know. He gestured to the camera pointed directly at them, not bothering to whisper considering they were mic-ed. Whatever they said would end up on television anyways. “My money’s on the leech over there.”

Theon followed his line of sight to the pale dark-haired man lingering awkwardly beside the kitchen sink as he waited for the microwave to ding with his ramen.

He raised his brows with surprise, expecting to hear Dickon or Trystane’s names over Domeric. He couldn't get a good read of him, but he didn't seem too irritating from what Theon had seen. The outgoing girls on Sansa’s stint on the show seemed to get into it more than the quieter ones did, anyhow, so he doubted it would be the Bolton kid that ended up starting a fight. “Dom? Doesn’t strike me as the type, mate.”

Asher merely shrugged at that, leaning further back against the cushions. “Dunno. Something about his look. Maybe it’s the eyes. Just don’t like him.”

He eyed the other man warily, trying to place him one way or another. He was an ass, for sure, but there was a sincerity about him. Something about his demeanor reminded Theon of Rickon, probably here for a good time over finding love. For all the reasons a guy could come on this kind of show, it wasn’t the worst. Sansa was probably the only person Theon had ever met who actually came on here to find love rather than fame, money, or attention.

Then again, they had only known each other for a handful of days; only time would really tell whether he was a good guy or not, though with the circumstances of their experiment-like captivity here, it seemed that the whole mental and emotional unraveling process might come sooner rather than later.

No one had rubbed him the wrong way yet. It was kind of boring, in all honesty, so he wasn’t sure why television dramatized it so much.

Most of the guys awkwardly tried finding common ground with the others, some even going out of their way to manufacture little contests for themselves in the pool outside. Kicking Lancel’s ass at the backstroke was the most fun he’d had since getting here, especially with how loudly his team rejoiced when they were announced the ‘grand champions’ of the mansion. None of it would make it to air unless someone snuck it into the bloopers at the end credits of the episode, but doing it was better than just sitting around and waiting for Oberyn Martell to show up and put them out of their misery.

It was torturous at this point.

He was lounging on the couch aimlessly, figuring that sitting in silence was a better alternative to reading from the Seven-Pointed Star anytime soon like Lancel was doing on the armchair to the far corner of the room. Asher stayed put and kept talking, though Theon had comfortably zoned out by the time he noticed a couple other guys ambling around the house to try to find something to entertain themselves with. It was starting to get stuffy in here.

As if the gods themselves heard Theon’s train of thought, a ringing sound came from the far side of the foyer.

It was done for their benefit, of course, considering all the cameras seemed to pan over them for some good reaction shots to skew in the editing room.

“Do I have your attention?” A woman with silvered hair clad in black barreled into the room, a paper cup in one hand and a phone in another. Men came trickling in from the kitchen, dodging a few cameramen as they rushed to investigate what was going on. At that point, Theon looked up and narrowed his eyes, a little glad he didn’t have to move for whatever announcement she thought to make to them now that a huddle was forming. “Make it snappy, himbos. Front of the room, stat.”

She turned to address a young girl holding up a manila folder, whispering something to the production assistant before turning back to the men who hastily assembled in the sitting room. Theon’s brows were raised to the skies by that point, growing antsy at the aggressive energy radiating off the woman.

“Alright, first one-on-one’s going to be announced. I need shocked faces, angry faces, sad faces, happy faces. I don’t care what your face is doing as long as it’s doing something. You,” she gestured to Podrick standing helplessly next to the couch until he moved hesitantly towards her. “You’re reading the envelope this week. Don’t stutter, don’t fuck it up, and do _not_ make it about yourself unless you’re giving us something we can work with. We’re going to ring the doorbell again and you’re going to give us a show. Group date’s getting announced tomorrow, so behave and you will be rewarded, suitors. Capeesh?”

A chorus of ‘yes’ and ‘yeah’s followed, though the executive producer already had her back turned on them as she barked commands out at the PAs trailing at her feet. Theon blinked when one dashed towards him, urging him off his feet and pushing Willas into his place. He could barely process what was going on in the game of musical chairs they seemed to be forced to play before he was squished between Trystane and Dickon on the couch across the one he had abandoned.

A few more seconds of shuffling ensued as various guys were placed around the room in advance of the one-on-one happening. It felt more like a television drama than a reality television show considering they were treated like barbies in a dollhouse rather than the group of nineteen guys (and Theon) who were now vying for a stranger’s heart.

The woman from earlier, a head producer perhaps, yelled out an affirmation that they were rolling before the room was overtaken by silence.

“Speak, himbos,” she ordered before a small buzz of conversation overtook the room, the anxiety levels between them seeming to spike at the sudden pressure.

Podrick was already standing up, leaning precariously close to a vase as Leo chatted away to him about rubbish as a means of stalling for time.

Theon sighed, already over this whole process. Was the whole competition going to be like this? How had Sansa managed to stand it the first time around? If it wasn’t for the _Sansa _aspect of it all, he would have walked out of the door right that second.

“Think you’ll get it?” A whisper sounded from his right, to which Theon glanced at Dickon, whose smile seemed just a bit too wide to be genuine. Was he just distrusting him because he was hot? Probably, but he was here to be vigilant. It couldn’t hurt to stay suspicious, for Sansa’s sake if anything. “The date, that is.”

He shrugged, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to get one until next week so as to not arouse suspicion that he was there as a mole and not an actual contestant. He only hoped he got a boat date rather than one of those boring apple-picking or ballroom dancing ones, considering he’d like to do something fun as opposed to the generic first dates contestants usually got. He wouldn’t be opposed to a helicopter one either, but he really wanted a boat date.

The plan was explained to him at least twenty times since the showrunner evidently thought he was some sort of idiot; they would go on their date, laugh it up, kiss chastely once or twice at dinner to sell the romance bit, and any opinions Theon had of the guys would be fair game. It was the only way to ensure he could get his first impressions out there while they were alone, and he’d get a two-on-one before his elimination so they could talk through any final courses of action before Sansa got her pick of the final four guys she had left in the competition.

“Maybe,” Theon conceded eventually just to shut Dickon up for a minute. When Trystane turned to look at him as well, he hammed it up a bit with the vocabulary he had picked up after watching the last season. He could only hope that it didn't come off as totally contrived. Robb always said he was a shit actor. “Dunno, we didn’t really connect as much as I wanted. I hope I get it, but I don’t know if I made enough of an impression, you know?”

“Yeah, I get you, man,” Dickon reassured him, biting back a confident smile that probably stemmed from making out with her on the balcony in his shitty white knight gear on night one. Theon figured someone on staff must have given it to him so he couldn’t hold it against the guy, but it seemed to rub some people the wrong way. Something about the ‘right reasons’ or whatever it was that Colin and Lancel were whispering about at the cocktail party. “I think I might get it.”

“Oh yeah?” Trystane cut in, an arm resting carelessly on the back of the couch.

“Yeah,” Dickon leveled with him in an effort to be nonchalant, as if all of them couldn’t see him pull Sansa for a quick snog a few nights prior. “We had a spark. I mean, it wasn’t love at first sight or anything but…” He paused for a second as if he knew how divisive his words would come across. “It came pretty damn close.”

It almost seemed like Trystane was about to respond when the telltale doorbell rung again. Theon fought to control his expression as everyone looked towards the noise. Podrick stiffly made his way to the door, at least three cameras following him as he took a crisp-looking envelope out of somebody’s hands.

“Is that a date card?” Someone threw in from the other couch, and the toughest battle yet was to not roll his eyes at the clear grab for attention. Theon tried to focus on Podrick as fumbled to open the envelope, keen not to give Robb any more chances to take the piss out of him than he already would. He would die before he made a fool out of himself on national television. “Open it, man!”

When the twenty-five-year-old finally managed to get it open, he read the contents of it aloud. “Trystane. Let’s get steamy. Love, Sansa.”

For a moment, Theon frowned. Was that a boat date or not? If it were, it would say something like ‘come sail away with me’ on the card, wouldn’t it? 

It sounded like a boring candlelit dinner date if he ever heard one, but he supposed it was left vague on purpose. It wasn’t like Sansa actually wrote those cards, so it was just as well that it was left ambiguous. Whatever poor intern was stuck with the date cards had probably penned it ten or twenty minutes ago.

He liked Trystane well enough. The season had just begun so no one really thought anything of it. There would be another couple of dates this week so it wasn’t like there was any preferential treatment in play. Sansa could have done worse for herself, seeing as the guy was a looker for sure.

Most of the men hooted at the announcement as soon as it was made, none too discouraged by losing out on the first date of the competition, especially since they had barely even gotten to spend four hours with Sansa by that point. How could anyone fall in love on this type of show? At this rate, these blokes would be more likely to fall for each other than actually get to know her well enough to try with her.

“I’m off then,” Trystane grinned, his smile near blinding as he ran a hand through his hair and leaped off the couch. He ambled over to his bedroom upstairs, slow enough that the crew would have time to trail after him. A natural on-camera, then. “There a dress code?” Theon caught Trystane murmuring to his assigned producer as he made his way up the staircase to get changed for the date.

“Good for him,” Podrick chimed in on his way back to the kitchen.

Dickon was sullen on Theon’s other side, watching on as Trystane ascended the steps with poorly restrained disdain. He watched the blond carefully, wondering if this was the first of the notorious mansion feuds that was about to go down on the season, and resolved to stay far away from it. Theon was a big personality too, it was true, but he wasn’t here to make a git of himself and get into fights with the other guys there when he was meant to be doing Sansa a favor. If there was something brewing between any of the guys, he planned on staying out of it.

It was a sensible plan, really, and one that Sansa would doubtless be proud of.

“Damn it all,” Dickon ended up muttering under his breath, his head bowing forward ever so slightly with defeat. He really thought he had this in the bag from the looks of it. “Are any of us ever gonna actually get to spend time with her? I want to see _her_, not spend the summer killing time with you lot. No offense.”

That one almost had a hint of humor to it, so Theon allowed the ends of his lips to twist upward, painstakingly aware of the cameras pointed at him.

Gods, there were at least thirty cameramen in this room alone. He wouldn’t even be able to take a piss without someone catching him on film, and that wasn’t even accounting for the hidden cameras he had no doubt were scattered around the house. The microphone strapped to his back suddenly seemed to itch. “None taken.”

“What does she see in him anyway?” Dickon continued complaining to which Theon felt a rumbling deep in his stomach again, reminding him of the abandoned quest for food that he almost set out on earlier before Asher interrupted him. “He’s all up in his ego and I can’t fucking stand it. He’s a clout chaser if I’ve ever seen one. The way he grafted on her earlier was transparent as fuck. He’s a user, man. I know his type.”

It was as if his soul had somehow ascended from his body. Theon cocked his head and forced himself to blink in the same manner as that one meme of that white guy he always saw online, figuring a comedic reaction was better than the shocked one he was feeling. Those were bold claims to make for a guy who had only been here for a few nights, but from what he gathered it was this place that made sane people do crazy shit. Dickon and Trystane shared a room between themselves and Hugh while Theon was stuck with Owen and Edric, so some sort of rivalry might have been brewing for days now while he was none the wiser.

“Are you going to tell Sansa?” Daryn questioned as if appearing from nowhere, black wisps of hair falling into his eyes as he inserted himself into the conversation and saved Theon having to actually respond to that—because what the fuck was he even supposed to say to someone saying something like that? Dickon was reading too far into it, he wagered; there must have been some sort of insecurity there to make him paranoid about Trystane’s motives. Resisting the urge to get out of there while he could, Theon forced himself to stay put. If anything, this would give him a little intel for Sansa in the coming days.

“I don’t know.” Dickon shrugged, biting down on his lower lip as he thought through the implications of snitching on a frontrunner so soon into the competition. Theon knew from Bran’s endless summaries of the past few seasons that tattle-tales usually got eliminated on the spot (or shortly after) the exposure of whatever subplot was going on to prompt the drama between them and another guy or girl in the house. His Bachelor crash course wasn't for nothing.“Might just sit on it. I’d rather focus on us, not waste my time on _him_ whenever I actually get a chance to get Sansa alone.”

“Solid plan,” Daryn hummed, sounding a bit disappointed that he hadn’t managed to walk in on a moment of TV gold. “Gods, I wish it was me going on that date.”

“Don’t we all,” Leo muttered as he walked past the back of the couch and headed upstairs, probably to cry or wank over his misfortune. Probably both.

* * *

After about twenty minutes of being prepped while her date waited helplessly outside the sauna with four cameras shoved in his face. He was doing an ITM by the looks of it, goaded on by a producer to confide in them about the upcoming date. Making them wait was a tactic Sansa was familiar with on Harry’s season; they would keep the girls hungry, sleep-deprived, and waiting for however long it took for them to break down and give them some good material to roll with.

It wasn’t personal. It was just television.

For all that some parts were scripted, the romantic in Sansa couldn’t help but hope that these guys were really here for her, rather than for the attention that came with getting to be on one of these shows. That’s what she had Theon for though, right? The girls had gotten to know each other on Harry’s season far better than any of them ever got to know him; Myranda had even confessed to the lot of them that she only came on the show to become an influencer anyhow, and had ended up winning the whole damn thing. If not for Harry’s very public indiscretions, she might have been trapped in a relationship with him for the next few months.

Sansa wasn’t going to make that mistake, though.

She wanted to take Willas on a date. She’d told Brienne as much and pegged Dickon for an early favorite as well, but her dates were selected by whichever member of staff was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

A corkboard with all of their faces had been put in her room in the mansion, one she had already spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at.

Already, her assigned producer had asked her for a list of men she favored, ranked from first to last. Trystane was on there as well, pegged pretty high up for no reason other than he was hot. They had chemistry, she recalled from the way he had pulled her onto his lap during their very first conversation. His lips were soft and his eyes were a molten brown that she was certain girls would be fawning over as soon as the season aired. Her one hang-up was the matter of his intentions.

Her first impression of him was that he was a player. His compliments seemed sincere but weren’t so specific that they couldn’t have been applied to any of the girls who were in the running to be the Bachelorette before Sansa was chosen.

After Harry, she was resolved to be more careful with who she gave her heart to.

“He has a brother and a sister,” Brienne briefed Sansa under her breath as Kenna ran the extras through where to stand and what to do in the background. Sansa was wearing a pale pink bikini under her ridiculously fluffed-up robe, warm enough that she would have been content not wearing it at all if not for the commotion around her; it was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. “He’s from Sunspear, remember, so you can make smalltalk over that. He answered in our early surveys that his favorite dessert is that Dornish lemon pastry, so-”

“Oh,” Sansa cut in thoughtlessly, a little brain dead from having to wait so long to even get to the date in the first place. Between getting her makeup done (which was a step up to having to do it herself when she was a contestant) and getting told what to do and when to do it, she was on autopilot. “Those are my favorite too.”

They were only at a sauna because Melisandre wanted something sexy from the second episode, and Trystane had the most sex-appeal of any of the contestants there. What better than a sauna or a hot-tub to get the audience going, especially in comparison to Sansa’s admittedly bland cookie-cutter favorites? They would probably send her and Willas frolicking through a field, and organize a renaissance fair or something for Dickon once she finally got to see what time one-on-one with him was like.

There would probably be a helicopter date at some point, though she imagined that would go to someone a little more daring like Griff or Asher.

Griff was rather attractive with his blue hair that was so pale it nearly looked white and his drawn-in brows, as if he had something truly bafflingly _serious_ on his mind. Griff was a year or two older than Theon if Sansa recalled correctly, though she found that she preferred having a pool of older contestants over people in their twenties. Willas was thirty-four, Griff was thirty-two, and Dickon was twenty-eight. The others ranged between the numbers, though only Podrick and Edric were younger than her by a year, and Trystane was her age.

Sansa struggled to remember some of the other contestants off the top of her head. There was Asher with the smile and Owen who whipped out an innuendo during his introductions in spite of how it made her cringe. Other than that…

It was hard to place when she was getting fussed at about camera angles.

Brienne gave her a knowing look. “I’m aware. We’ll have a spread for you two before you sit down for dinner. Remember not to eat it on camera and not to say anything to him until you’re done with it. They want to capture all the authentic-”

“All the authentic moments, I know,” Sansa laughed good-naturedly, noticing the bags under Brienne’s eyes as she clutched her iced coffee in her hand. Jaime Lannister was lingering behind her, leaning carelessly against his trailer as nosy fans snapped as many pictures of him out in the open as they could manage. It was a trial given how he tried to avoid media scrutiny, but he could only ward off the attention for so long. She smiled warmly at Brienne, not caring much about whatever the scoop on Trystane was. She would get to know him herself today without having to mentally prepare a set of flashcards for it. “Hot date tonight?”

Brienne scoffed under her breath, averting her gaze like she always did whenever she was flustered. “That’s neither here nor there.”

Sansa’s grin widened. “So that’s a yes then?”

Brienne leveled with her, a slight smile teasing the edges of her lips. “Perhaps.”

“Can we get Sansa at downstage left?” A voice called out hoarsely from the other side of the sauna where Trystane was nodding on intently with whatever Elissa was telling him to do. Sansa had to admit that she was relieved Littlefinger didn’t seem to be one of the head producers for her season, considering he had carried several girls close to the end of the Bachelor. Myranda was one of his girls and she had won; perhaps he had just taken her season off. The voice tuned back in as Sansa steadied her breathing and calmed herself in preparation to meet her date again. “Sometime today, please.”

She complied quickly, a hand guiding her by the back as they positioned her directly outside of the sauna. Her makeup was ‘natural’ though it had taken nearly an hour to do, and her hair was braided back demurely for the date.

Trystane was garbed in the same robe as her, his hair attractively disheveled as he turned to face her. She offered him a small smile, secretive and coy, as she rocked back and forth in her spot. The DP started describing frame checks as they stood in place, Trystane’s own grin blossoming as they maintained each other’s gaze. There was something intimate about the way he was looking at her, humorous and sensual as they were put into place like dolls rather than people.

Gods, they would probably be standing like this for hours at the rate this was going at. At least she hadn’t been forced to wear heels today.

“Okay,” a voice boomed through a megaphone behind her, shocking some sense back into her head. “You’re going to walk towards each other. Try a spinning hug, legs around waist, hold it for five beats and then greet each other. Improvise and improvise _well_ or we’ll have to do it again. Places in fifteen seconds.”

“Thank you fifteen,” a chorus of crew members confirmed unenthusiastically as people shuffled from place to place, the lights above her getting adjusted slightly to the left as everything got into place. She caught Trystane’s eye again as the rush to get everything settled in the next ten seconds ensued; people were running, crouching to get out of the shot, and the cameramen to her right were standing just a bit too close for comfort as they usually did to get the perfect angles of her.

“Alright… go,” Elissa ordered and Trystane sprung into motion immediately while grinning at her, looking quite the sight in his fluffy white robe, some slogan of whatever company they were getting sponsored by across the front of it.

Sansa’s own smile practically consumed her face as she followed suit, emboldened by the sweet way his eyes trailed on her. If anything, it made her feel special to have him so… _into_ her from the get-go. Her most recent ex had played his games; withholding attention, mincing his words as if he knew they would get him in trouble eventually, and taking his sweet time to pick his favorite. It was nice to be on the opposite end of that and to have these guys at her beck and call.

It felt like justice after what she had been put through with Harry.

She put an extra bit of umph into her final step, leaping up so that she could comfortably bind her legs around Trystane’s hips in the way the producers seemed to like it. It was something about the aesthetic that they preferred, considering she had been encouraged to do it every time she met up with Harry despite her height making it a bit uncomfortable to do. Trystane caught her easily, his hands molding comfortably against her waist as her robe rippled around her, already beginning to come undone with how sudden the action was. She could practically _hear_ the way Oberyn was going to narrate this part of their date.

He swayed slightly on his feet before setting her down gently on the ground.

Untangling her arms from behind his neck, Sansa breathed a nervous laugh at the sudden proximity between them.

One of his hands lingered at her hips as he reached forward to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. His eyes crinkled at the ends, his voice just as soothing as it had been the last time they had seen each other. “You look beautiful, Sansa. As radiant as the sun itself.”

What a _line_.

She couldn’t help the sudden blooming of warmth at her cheeks as they separated for long enough that she noticed a camera pointed closely at her face from the side of her eyes. Focusing on him just for the sake of not having to reshoot it, she ducked her head forward bashfully, her forehead brushing unintentionally against his shoulder. “Smooth talker.”

“Just for you,” he chimed in, smiling winningly at her again before offering her a hand. She took it without hesitation, returning his smile in full—his energy was infectious, and the bursts of life he was giving her after an exhausting morning of prep-work made her regret ever being disappointed that he was on this date with her. He squeezed her hand lightly within his, warm and solid and smelling vaguely like her favorite old spice perfume from the boutique Missandei and Roslin got all those free products to pimp out on Instagram from. “I never tell lies, I’m afraid. There’s not a woman in this city that could hold a candle to you.”

“I bet you say that to every girl you meet on reality television,” Sansa countered, watching their joined hands with fascination as he made a point to lace their fingers together. She cocked her head the slightest bit as he smiled down at her, as self-assured and mysterious as he had been from the start. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dipping forward, Trystane rested his forehead against hers, their clasped hands still awkwardly lingering in the air. “You’re wrong.”

Her smile lingered on her face even as Elissa yelled “cut” and instructed them on what route to take into the sauna itself.

She didn’t spend much time with them, instead directing most of her frustrated commands at the film crew who were struggling to get ahead of them, all positioned in various doorways inside so that they could get many shots to choose from during post-production.

Sansa wasn’t completely sure about how it all worked but she knew that there was a control room where the producers and the showrunner hung out, instructing other crew members on what to do, what cameras to focus on, and how to kickstart whatever plotlines they were trying to manipulate into existence during the season in question. Brienne told her it was exhausting to spend time there; that they were ruthless and that she ought to not even wonder about what was said in there. She wanted to save the world; her aim was to make television that would make a difference, and the Bachelor franchise was her way of breaking into a cutthroat industry after spending most of her adult life working as a personal bodyguard to Renly Baratheon.

After six years with the show, Brienne was still struggling to find some sort of footing in the path she wanted to pave for herself, and Sansa could relate. She still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life and the ‘interior designer’ label under her name during the last season felt like a joke.

Shilling products online like her friends from the show were doing wasn’t her style but interior design had only gotten her so far; she wanted to do something she loved, but it seemed that everything she thought she loved to do got exhausting after spending a finite amount of time doing it. It had happened with fashion design and then with political science and then with that job she got interning for the Vale’s state representatives, and on and on until she exhausted her options.

Now she was here, on a dating show hoping to meet the love of her life when she barely even had herself figured out.

It had worked out with plenty of people before, though. Mya Stone had proven everyone wrong as the youngest Bachelorette at just twenty-four years old when she got engaged. So far, it seemed to be working out for her relatively well. They were only a year in but everyone seemed to think they were in for the long haul. There was no timer on love. Or so Sansa told herself when she got deep in her feelings about dying alone and unloved.

But that was neither here nor there.

Once the woman manning the front desk gave them instructions about how long they were to stay in the sauna before going into the massaging room, Sansa cracked the door open for the pair of them, closing her eyes at the impact of the steam within the sauna on her face. It was soothing, especially after the shock of going from the warm outdoors into the heavily air-conditioned building they were in. She wanted to nestle into some pillows and go back to sleep to be honest, though another part of her (the one with the racing heart and flushed cheeks) prayed to every god that this date wouldn’t be awkward or uncomfortable.

She settled on the upper wooden bench, awkwardly taking her robe off and handing it over to one of the assistants waiting with outstretched hands to take it.

Trystane wasted no time in stripping his own robe off, ever proud to be shirtless even in the dim lighting of the sweltering room. She noticed that he was wearing orange swim trunks, bright and bold just like him. He eyed her two-piece appreciatively and if she stretched out a little bit for his benefit, that wasn’t anyone’s business.

She wanted him to be attracted to her, okay?

He was a good-looking man and the validation she was already getting from this process was addictive. Besides, this was probably going to be the one sexy date that she was allowed to have until fantasy suites; if anything, this would be the time to establish the basics of whether these guys were actually into her or not.

He sat on the same level as her, glancing at her twice before mustering up the courage to initiate any sort of close contact with her in the odd setting of their date.

It had happened with people before, Sansa knew, but she had never been on a date like this.

Her dates the last season comprised of a few group dates, a one-on-one shopping spree, a two-on-one dinner date, and then frolicking through the city before the fantasy suite date. Her last one with Harry had just been dinner and a beach-side slow dance to the tune of a string quartet that was brought out for them.

This was new territory for her. What did people even do on these dates other than make out? She could already feel sweat beading at her forehead and under her boobs unattractively and couldn’t help but bristle at the thought of sweating her pores out while a hot guy tried to make conversation with her in this temperature.

“Come here,” Trystane urged her softly, spreading his legs as he gestured for her to sit between them. She shot the cameramen a look, noting that there were only two of them here now that the door had closed, and no producers to accompany them. It was a rare privacy to what people usually got from the show. She eyed him with a cocked brow at the suggestive remark, to which he merely laughed. “I won’t bite, I swear.”

“We have a professional masseuse waiting for us,” Sansa reminded him gently, a smile beginning to tug at her lips. “It won’t be that long until we get to go there.”

“Then what’s the harm in starting a little early?” Trystane leaned forward a little, a curl sticking slightly to his forehead before he shook it away. “They say the Dornish have magical fingers. Defter than anyone in King’s Landing ever was.”

“Is that so?” Sansa responded, something nervous fluttering in her stomach as he kept looking at her with those hooded eyes of his; he was offering her a massage and she’d be an idiot not to jump at the chance to do it.

She didn’t wait for him to respond before kicking her feet over the edge of the bench, carefully walking along the marble floor until she had fully approached him.

Sansa settled in front of him, drawing both knees up so that she could comfortably lean against his chest. She tried to steady her breathing at the feeling of his torso against her back, exhaling sharply when he shuffled closer to her, his hands finding her shoulders with ease.

He began kneading the skin there with his fingers, steady but not so hard that it was rough. It was… nice. Soothing, really.

“What’s your story, Sansa?” He murmured, his breath tickling her ear as his thumbs rubbed circles into her shoulder blades. “I know the woman I saw on television. I know the woman I met in the mansion. Who are you beneath that?”

It was more existential than she thought he would go for.

She felt her muscles relax slightly, eyes sliding shut as his fingers worked along her shoulders and the back of her neck, rubbing over every kink and stress-induced knot there. “I’m Northern. I’m a Stark. My family…” her breath hitched slightly as he rubbed at a particularly sensitive spot on the nape of her neck. She could see them as clear as day— Robb, Arya, Theon, Bran, Jon, Father, Mother, Rickon, Lady, Jeyne, Beth, Hodor, Old Nan, her uncles, her aunt, her more distant cousins, Jory, Winterfell— “They’re everything to me.”

“My family’s important to me too,” he whispered, his hands splaying slightly farther out to cover her arms slightly, brushing them up and down and somehow making the action seem sexy. “I love them dearly. We’d do anything for each other, especially my sister. Have you ever been to Dorne, Sansa?”

Shaking her head slightly, she found it difficult to think straight with his hands kneading expertly into her back. Gods, this was better than most massages she paid for; he wasn’t kidding about the ‘magic fingers’ bit, as melty as it sounded coming from him. “Never. I’ve always wanted to see it—see the beaches.”

Even though she couldn’t see him, she could tell he was smiling. “I’ll have to show them to you someday.” A pause. “I’ve never been up North either. Does it snow much? My aunt always told me it’s like a blizzard there. Her ex-husband married a Northern woman. Or so I’ve heard.”

Sansa smiled wistfully in remembrance of their last winter, her knitted cap practically obscuring her eyes as Arya forced her to go ice skating with Gendry and Rickon in Winterfell’s rink. She was practically laying against Trystane now, his hands transitioning to rub up and down her arms as if he knew his touch scorched her with every movement. She thought about the blizzards that would come every so often in the wintertime, coating the entire region mercilessly in inches of powdery snow. “It snows like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I believe it,” he murmured, taking a bigger risk than she would have pegged him for and shifting closer to her, his hands roaming over the expanse of her bare stomach. She fought to control the rapid acceleration of her heart, enjoying the feeling more than she expected to. It was intimate. Nice. “It sounds… tantalizing.”

It was as if the mood shifted entirely when she tilted her head to the side, getting her first look at him since they started speaking. Her lips suddenly felt dry despite being sweatier than she ever had been before, acutely aware of his hands resting on her abdomen. Her nose brushed against his cheek as she responded, speaking just for the sake of talking rather than saying something meaningful. Her lips were moving of their own accord at this point. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is,” Trystane agreed as if he hadn’t just admitted to never having been there before. In truth, she had no clue what they were talking about anymore.

He just barely managed to let his gaze drop to her lips before his mouth was on hers, hot and tasting vaguely of the spearmint gum he had been chewing earlier.

She breathed him in, her hand raising to cup his cheek with the intention of drawing him closer to her. His jaw was stubbled and sharp, and his lips moved against hers like honey inside steamed tea, purposeful and expertly. The kiss progressed with fervor, Sansa’s body betraying her in how she pushed against him, wanting more and more until-

His fingers were teasing at the waistband of her bikini bottoms.

“Is this okay?” He asked her, his voice just barely a whisper as she stilled in his arms. Her head wasn’t working—it felt like her mind was a control board that short-circuited immediately upon kissing him, snipped wires exploding with electricity at the mere thought of thinking. He grazed his lips over her jaw, pressing a light kiss there though his hands stayed put where they were, not daring to move until their strangely sexual limbo ended.

She should have pushed him away; what kind of guy went for sex twenty minutes into actually spending time together? Better yet, she barely knew him. She didn’t even know his star-sign, but she was considering it. She _wanted_ him to touch her- to make her feel good after the stressful jump from getting humiliated on television to being thrown back into it as if nothing had even happened at all. She didn't know him, but that didn't seem to matter in the heat of the moment.

Before she could think it through, she nodded. “Yeah.”

He edged one hand into a place she didn’t think _anyone_ would be paying any attention to for the next few dates to come, his hand beginning to explore the uncharted territory when she realized with alarm that they weren’t alone.

“Can you leave?” She hissed out to the two cameramen whispering to one another heatedly as if they had just been debating whether to leave or call in someone who was in charge to intervene. It was inappropriate and bizarre and not the right move for her very first date, but she couldn’t think with his hands rubbing her teasingly. She wanted salvation, clarity, release—whatever she could get out of this encounter, she wanted it. “Just… give us ten minutes, okay?”

The bearded one on the left in the deep green shirt hesitated for a moment before shrugging, leaving through a back exit Sansa hadn’t even realized was there.

Before she could do so much as breathe a sigh of relief once they were both gone, Trystane’s lips were pressing urgent kisses to her neck, two of his fingers joining together to edge from her clit to her wetness itself. Sansa gasped at the feeling, her hand clutching at his occupied arm to urge him to continue while her other snaked downward to give him a hand. It would be over faster if it was a joined effort and they couldn't take this time for granted.

He chuckled against her neck, teeth grazing the skin there as she began rubbing at herself in spiral patterns, arching against him when his fingers pushed into her.

She just barely registered his spare hand cupping her breast through her swimsuit, though she pushed against his hand at her center with a desperation deep within her. She wanted to feel good, to feel wanted, to feel _needed_. She whined slightly nudging at his forehead with her nose until he looked up for long enough for her to initiate another kiss. He kissed her messily while he fucked her with his fingers, the fast tempo matching her masturbation so overwhelmingly that she could only keep it up for another twenty seconds before waves of pleasure were crashing over her.

She imagined they were the Dornish seas, rising and falling with a setting sun.

And then it faded.

He was still continuing long enough to see her through her orgasm, breaking the kiss to press another one against her lips and then another. It was like they were lovers and not strangers; as if they knew each other at all and didn’t just go at it like two dogs in heat the moment the cameras were turned away from them.

The panic kicked in pretty much immediately, accompanied very closely by the sheer embarrassment of having done that. She had just hooked up with him. In a sauna. On their first date. On her _very_ first date as the Bachelorette. On television, probably.

His dick was pressing up against her lower back, covered with the thin layer of protection his shorts gave him, though he made no move to undress even as he withdrew his fingers from within her. He didn’t seem to expect her to reciprocate, or else he would be initiating more kisses, or urging her around to look at him. He simply waited for her to make the next move.

“Shit,” she breathed as she readjusted her bottoms, scrambling off his lap as the gravity of the situation kicked in. What would he even think of her after doing this? What would her parents think when they watched this on television? What would the other guys think if he told her? This could ruin a number of her relationships with the men in the house if not all of them, all because she couldn’t help but let a hot stranger finger her in a sauna like it was a racy movie and not her life. “_Shit_.”

“That good?” Trystane joked, though he seemed to know that she was panicking by the way he sat back and allowed her whatever space she needed.

Gods, were there hidden cameras here? There had to be, right?

It was a professional establishment and she had just-

“Shit,” Sansa searched for her robe to no avail before realizing someone had taken it before she entered. “Gods, Trystane, I’m sorry, I- I don’t usually do this. I don’t know what came over me and I’m just- I- Gods, we shouldn’t have-”

“Hey,” he stood up, offering her his hand as if it hadn’t just been inside her. The sight of it brought more bile to Sansa’s throat, the realization of what she had just done fully starting to kick in now. She glanced down to see him hard in his swim trunks, though he sounded calmer and collected than ever. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone, okay? There’s no one here, Sansa. If they ask, we just made out. Wanted to steal a moment together away from the cameras. That sound good?”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, though she supposed he had no reason to lie to her. She could always beg Brienne to destroy any footage of this for her, right?

She had to calm down.

They wouldn’t fire her for hooking up. That was the point of the show, right?

“Yeah,” Sansa steadied herself without taking the hand offered to her. Gods, she barely knew him and she was… her relief and satisfaction from moments earlier trickled into an anxiety she couldn’t manage to wrangle in, though she attempted to front like she was fine for the sake of whatever relationship she would end up forming with Trystane in the near future. Panicking after their first hookup wasn’t a good look for a potential future wife, she knew. “Yeah, sorry, I just… I really don’t usually do this. We just- I got carried away. I’m sorry, I really didn’t intend on-”

“I know,” Trystane laughed lightly, without any maliciousness behind it. He gestured towards the entrance they had come in from, figuring it was well past time to pay the masseuse a visit. “We should go, though. Before they come looking for us. And Sansa?” He paused with his hand hovering over the door handle of the sauna, a smirk edging on his lips as he looked at her warmly. Bizarrely, the sight reminded her of Theon when he recounted his big ‘threesome’ story (or lie, knowing his teenage self) to her, Robb, and Arya after prom night nearly a decade ago.

She shook the thought from her head, wondering how clouded-up her brain had to have been to associate Trystane with Theon in any capacity. “Yeah?”

“I don’t regret it.” He pushed the door open with an exaggerated flourish, instantly corralled away from her by a PA hoping to get the scoop before anyone else could. She barely got a chance to breathe before someone else was rushing her, bombarding her with questions about what had happened after they sent the last of the cameramen away, knowing that just the act of asking any crew members to leave was an implication of its own that the editors would twist in whatever way they wanted. 

“What happened?” Brienne hissed out as soon as she got her away from Walda who was trying to ITM her earlier than initially planned. “Sansa, you can’t send the cameramen away, especially not now. You’re lucky it’s me here and not a location manager or…” she calmed herself down once Sansa tentatively braced herself against the concrete wall of the sauna, hastily taking her dark green barn coat off to preserve some of her modesty while they were outside in the view of the crew and the general public, who didn’t seem to take much notice of shift considering it was normal for couples to be split up throughout their dates for re-shoots.

“I’m not judging you, Sansa,” Brienne assured her as she adjusted the jacket around her, leaning in a little closer to whisper to her. “But I told you I would keep you safe. If you want… private time with any of the suitors, I can arrange it for you. You just need to ask me. Doing it without permission, it doesn’t look good. On us, on them, or on you. Especially if you get caught. Not to mention protection. There’s a pharmacy nearby. Do you need me to get you… anything?”

The meaning was crystal clear to her, though the warning about pissing production off sent Sansa’s anxiety spiking; she hadn’t even thought to account for how the producers would feel about her going rogue, though she hadn’t been _thinking_ much at all when she made the decision. She had to be more careful.

“I didn’t sleep with him,” Sansa blurted out the half-truth as quietly as she could manage. She remembered Littlefinger’s unprompted advice to her on Harry’s season even though she wasn’t even one of his girls; advice about how to stand out, about how to lie, about how to get someone’s attention and twist it in her favor. “We just wanted some time alone to get to know each other authentically.”

She felt bad for doing it to Brienne, and even worse when the other woman didn’t even question the excuse thrown her way.

“Alright,” the producer smiled down at her affectionately, still taking a shine to Sansa that she didn’t quite understand but appreciated all the same. “Mel said that the control room needs more shots of you in the sauna. She wants more heat. Just play up the chemistry, okay?”

Sansa braced herself for the journey of reshoots ahead of her.

* * *

Theon was immersed in a rather intense game of UNO when a knocking came at the front door. He was playing with Asher, Podrick, Owen, and Morris, the cameraman assigned to keep tabs on them in case anything juicy went down. It was well into the evening now, and they were on their fourth game since they had gotten bored enough to convince production that a card game would tide them over for the time being.

It was better than nothing, though Monopoly might have been better in terms of a sustainable long-term distraction when they were bored.

Everyone perked up, though Theon was relieved the game was on hold for now.

He had gotten the ‘draw four’ card whipped out on him more times than should have been allowed in the game, grasping onto fifteen cards whereas all the other guys were in the single digits. Owen had three left, so it was a nice respite to keep him from smoking all of their asses at this game again.

This time, there weren’t any producers bothered enough to organize them in certain positions ahead of time. Instead, another assistant swung the door open before backing up out of the shot. Morris was already back in the zone, filming Trystane intently as he strolled back into the house in a way that Theon could only describe as glowing. He didn’t miss the way the cameramen focused on Dickon as he hopped down from the staircase, as if they could will some kind of fight between the two men into existence just by pointing a camera at them.

Trystane was wearing a plain shirt underneath his blazer, but the bright red rose pinned to the front seemed to speak louder than any words he could say did.

“How’d it go, man?” Griff made the first move to congratulate him, taking his time to lay across the loveseat closest to the corner of the room.

By the looks of things, the realization that more men were going to get cut this week seemed to be sinking in.

He didn’t know why people seemed so surprised. Judging by the season he watched for Sansa, most solo dates ended up with a rose being given out unless it went so badly that the other person got sent home. Two more roses would be distributed before the rose ceremony at the end of the week, though Theon prayed to the Drowned God directly that he got a little fun out of the week before having to sit through another one of those again.

It seemed so direct and to the point on television, but the ceremony took all bloody night to get through.

The last one had been them all shuffling from one foot to the other, fighting to stay awake as Sansa was pulled to the side and coached and makeup-ed for half an hour between every guy she called on to accept his rose. Theon almost lost the will to live entirely during the first ceremony, downing as many glasses of champagne as he could manage in between takes to get him through it.

“Amazing,” Trystane smiled cryptically at Griff, shrugging his blazer off as he entered the sitting room. He decided to elaborate once everyone’s expectant stares only deepened with his purposeful vague attitude about it. “We got massages done and grabbed some food, ate some Dornish pastries, that kind of stuff.”

“I’d kill for a pastry right now,” Colin announced with a sigh.

Before long, the date was all but forgotten. There was no point dwelling on it when they all had a long, uneventful night ahead of them. By the time Theon and Asher came together in a joint effort to convince production to order pizza to the mansion, it seemed that there was relative harmony in the house.

They refused, of course, but it was the thought that counted.

* * *

He had barely dragged his ass out of bed when someone was shouting from downstairs, the excited call of “group date card!” breaking him from his sleepy haze.

He tugged a clean shirt over his head and rushed to the bathroom, grabbing carelessly for his toothbrush as their producer for the day (the location manager, if he remembered correctly) patiently waited for them to get downstairs. Brushing his teeth barely took longer than two minutes, but his FOMO died out pretty much immediately upon running into Rakharo on the staircase.

“About fucking time, huh?” The dark-haired man flashed him a smile as he skipped every other stair on his way down. Rakharo’s yellow shirt was half-unbuttoned, but he took his time in getting it done up. “I just wanna get out of here for a day already. Feels like we’ve been in the house forever.”

“You can say that again, Rocky,” Desmond announced as he zipped past them both on the stairs, leaning up against the railing as if he intended on sliding down. “The girl’s bloody gorgeous too, so that’s a perk we’ve got on us. As soon as we get out of Westeros, we'll have it made.”

“She’s easy on the eyes,” Rakharo agreed as he landed on the ground and waited for Theon to get there, just to hear the tail end of their conversation about Sansa. Desmond was leaning against the framed doorway, rubbing at his beard with a hand as the other man spoke. “-show her a good time, you know?”

“What was that?” Theon asked curiously, trying to remain as nonchalant as he could given that they were having possibly their only uncensored conversation for the day now. If they were objectifying her or anything, it was his job to know.

“Group dates,” Desmond explained tepidly as a gaggle of girls dressed in black approached them, ready to strap their mics on them ahead of the scenes they would film. He raised the back of his shirt in compliance but kept talking without acknowledging the coordinators and producers working to get them ready for the day ahead of them. “Rocky here was saying he wants to get to go to a carnival. Says it’ll be fun-”

“It will be,” Rakharo insisted as his mic was secured by his jeans while the same was done to Theon by another crew member. “There’s cotton candy, fun games, competition that writes itself, and we get to win her shit. Ferris wheels too, you know? It’s a hell of a lot better than just walking around King’s Landing.”

Theon couldn’t argue with that.

It took another half-hour to even get to the card-reading. Everyone had to get ready, get mic-ed in, get placed around the ground level in different positions for the announcements. This time, Theon was going to be pretending to make a sandwich with Podrick on his other side. He got a frying pan out and waved a spatula in front of him uselessly as the other man reached for a loaf of bread to mess around with. He wondered if he could sneak a bite or two in, considering they hadn’t gotten breakfast. Elissa wasn’t here; the producer they had to deal with today was Davos, who was considerably more lenient than the others.

He gestured to the loaf in Podrick’s hands as Davos gave them five minutes to places.

For a moment, he looked at Theon confusedly before he realized what he wanted. He handed the loaf over obediently, not wanting to open it himself.

Theon shoved the smallest piece of bread from the top into his mouth before spinning the bag shut again and knotting it at the end. It was good where rye bread was concerned. Then again, it was just bread. Nothing special. He would have preferred some jam or eggs with it, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. One of the execs on site would probably tear his head off if he ruined their shot by starting to cook himself food. It would be best to just get it over with.

He went back to grabbing at the olive oil, making a point to drizzle it against the unheated pan as if he was actually going to make some toasties for them.

The familiar ringing of the doorbell alerted Theon to the fact that they were starting. He struggled to chew the piece of bread faster and swallowed while Dickon swung the door open, announcing that there was a group date card.

“Take the wheel with me,” Dickon read from the card with a smirk before looking back down at it, his smile broadening somewhat as he listed the names attached to it. “Asher, Colin, Domeric, Griff, Jon F., Lancel, Podrick, Rakharo, Theon.”

Theon surveyed the rest of the room, wondering who would get the next one-on-one. Probably either Dickon, considering Trystane already had his rose. That was probably why Dickon seemed happy about it. All he could hope for was that they would get fed something beforehand. Preferably something fatty and horrible like chicken nuggets or chicken tenders or anything that wasn’t kale salad and salami-provolone sandwiches with crackers.

He just wanted something good for once, rather than cooking for themselves.

After about thirty minutes being taken to get dressed, Theon made his way to the van waiting for them outside of the mansion, getting chatted at by some producer he reckoned had a personal stake in him winning. Sansa said every producer had three or four contestants to themselves- that they got a huge pay raise or some shit if one of their contestants won. This girl’s name was Ros and she was… well, she was pretty damn hot, all things considered. If he hadn’t seen her making out with one of the makeup girls in the corner of the room before prep-work for the second round of ITMs, he might have tried to make a pass at her.

“Just have fun,” she instructed him as he crossed the gate of the mansion, rolling his eyes lightly at the advice. As if he didn’t intend on having fun as it was. There wasn’t anyone around except for Podrick, who was patiently waiting for his turn to speak with her. “I know you’re not winning this. You know you’re not winning this. But the farther you get, the better it looks for me. Play up the comedy. Make her laugh, make the audience _want_ you to win. Got it?”

He nodded and ascended up the steps to grab a seat closest to the back.

Within five minutes, Podrick was settling in next to him, drawing in calming breaths the way he had seen Catelyn Stark do that one time he and Robb tried to make protein shakes in high school but forgot to secure the top of the blender. Spinach and mango mix had gotten all over the kitchen walls, and he was relatively sure she had never wanted to strangle them so much in her life. Thank the gods for yoga, or she probably would have killed them right then.

Podrick smoothed out the collar of his own grey polo shirt, glancing outside nervously. His knee couldn’t stop shaking, a habit that was already beginning to annoy Theon not five minutes into sitting beside him. As if he could feel Theon’s irritation radiating off of him, Podrick gulped loudly and shifted. “Sorry.”

If he had any other face, Theon would have shrugged it off.

But with those round brown puppy eyes, Theon couldn’t help but feel bad for being obvious about it. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled. “What’s got you going?”

“Ros,” Podrick sighed, twisting his hands around in his lap. “She’s just been telling me to step up my game. Said some things that I needed to hear, I don’t know.”

The engine to the van revved up, though there weren’t any cameras on them. Their conversation was definitely still being recorded in spite of that, so he had to mind what he said. “She’s just playing the game, man. It’s nothing personal.”

Podrick seemed unconvinced but nodded anyways.

Theon kept going, unsure about why he cared about this guy’s feelings. “She wants you to win. That’s why she’s giving you a hard time, you know? It’s not about you if that’s what you think it’s about. What’d she say? Bring up some shit about your past? Your dad? Your family? Don’t pay attention to it. She’s just trying to get a rise out of you so she can get what she wants out of you. It’s about money, man, not you.”

“I don’t care about winning,” Podrick cut in defensively, to which Theon could only blink with surprise. “I mean, I- I’m here for Sansa. Not… whatever this game is. I just want to get to know her without having to become someone else to do it.”

Of all the things Podrick could have said, that was probably the best of them.

Podrick didn’t linger on the subject long, instead choosing to hone in on whatever Ros had said to get into his head outside of the van. “She said a lot of stuff about my family. My birth family, they- they weren’t the best people. I didn’t know them long, but it wasn’t…” he struggled to find the words, his cheeks a brighter red than Theon thought was possible for a human being. He was oversharing, but Theon didn't mind it that much. “It wasn’t necessary.”

He offered the other man a tight smile before shrugging, wanting to say _something_ right to help this guy out, at least. “If it helps, I’m her guy too.”

“It does,” Podrick responded kindly, though he might have just been lying for Theon’s benefit. They didn’t really say anything for the rest of the ride over to their group date location, but it wasn’t a bad kind of silence.

* * *

The date was all about bumper cars.

Theon had scored a bright blue one, enjoying the freedom that came with just ramming into anything and everything in his path. Sansa was in a red one and seemed to go after him specifically, bumping her car into his so hard that he nearly flew out of his seat entirely. They had locked each other into the rink’s corners when Colin’s pink car jostled her enough for Theon to make an escape.

They locked eyes as Rakharo whooped and whistled, his car slamming enthusiastically into Podrick’s unsuspecting one.

He winked and Sansa's smile only broadened at the action. It was then that he realized how much he _missed_ her.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her in weeks or anything, but her being in his vicinity just made everything here feel so much more _real_ than it did when she wasn’t around. The cameras, the guys, the burgeoning drama, the shitty food; none of it was real when she was tipping her head back and laughing in the carefree way that she always did when she was really having fun. If going through a few weeks with these dumbasses made her smile like that, he’d do it a hundred times over.

The evening came to an end when Lancel got his hair caught on a pole and jerked out of his car so fast that he twisted his wrist. He went to the ER (and gods, would the producers milk that footage for what it was worth) and the cocktail party commenced as planned. Lancel would probably get a rose by the end of the week just for getting hurt, so Theon supposed it was a small victory.

He got his chance to speak with Sansa after the third guy came out of the dining room with her, all smiles even as she pulled other guys to talk to.

Gods, the group date process was one of the strangest parts of this show. It felt like he was getting his own in-depth look into Sansa Stark’s personal harem in here, though most of the other guys seemed to think of it competitively. The more time someone spent with her, the better he thought he was doing even if he completely bombed in conversation. Theon had heard enough ‘mind if I steal you for a sec’s to last him a lifetime by this point.

She took him by the hand and held a glass of champagne with the other, as they settled on the burgundy couch in the center of the room.

He tried not to bristle as a camera was shoved two inches from his face, instead focusing on the enthusiastic hug Sansa had drawn him into. He wrapped his arm around her back, minding the fabric of the sparkly evening gown she was wearing.

The hug lasted longer than most of her conversations with some of these guys did. She smelled like strawberries and those expensive vanilla candles she always gave him for his birthday. “Am I doing okay?” She whispered as they prolonged the embrace, burying her nose into his neck as they held each other.

“You’re doing amazing,” Theon squeezed her waist lightly before releasing her the slightest bit, his smile widening as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. It was hard to believe the brat he’d grown up with had found her element on a show like this. She was practically glowing as she reached for his hand again, listening intently to whatever he had to say like his opinion truly meant something to her. “Don’t worry. All the guys love you, Sans.”

“What do you think?” She worried her lower lip between her teeth and for a moment, he was caught off guard.

Hadn’t he just told her she was doing well?

“I mean,” he furrowed his brows, giving her dress a once over at the question. It was flattering. It was sparkly and form-fitting, a fun black dress he could have sworn he saw her wear once in the past. Her boobs looked really good in it but he doubted that was the compliment she wanted to hear. He had decidedly spent most of their adult lives trying _not_ to check her out, so being asked to appraise her dress was relatively new territory for him. “You look hot.”

A slow smirk wormed its way onto her lips. “I meant about the guys.”

Theon jutted his lower lip out and gestured down at his rather basic outfit in preparation for the cocktail party—it was the salmon-colored suit Robb had worn to his junior prom, though no one but him and Sansa knew that. “I mean, the gown’s pretty and all but it kinda pales in comparison to this little number, huh?”

"You look very sexy, Theon,” Sansa placated him in a mocking way, patting his cheek gently as he fought not to laugh at the condescending tone to her voice—oddly enough, it sounded more Ned than Catelyn, and the image of Ned in _that_ dress nearly caused champagne to come squirting out of his nose. “But what about the guys? What do you think? Any good ones, bad ones, favorites, anyone you hate-”

“Slow down, love.” Theon reached up to grasp her hand with his, holding it to his cheek in a way that might have been romantic if this wasn’t _Sansa_. It would probably look that way to anyone who walked in on them. He wondered what the cameramen thought about the leads, considering they always seemed to be around but had no room to make their opinions known. “Uh, I don’t know, it’s still early days. But I guess Dickon’s not the most popular guy in the house.”

Sansa frowned. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, apparently.

“I mean, it’s only been four days.” He tried to offer her some comfort now that there was a concerned crease between her brows, honestly still not having made up his mind yet about the other guy. “He might have just had a rough first impression. He’s got some beef with Trystane but I don’t know if it’s just like… a TV thing or an actual thing. I guess we’ve gotta wait to see but I’ll-”

“Sansa?” A voice came from the door, to which they whipped their heads over to where the intruder was standing. Theon couldn’t help the little burst of annoyance in his head as he let go of Sansa’s hand, staring daggers at Domeric from across the room. He had been in here for what? Five minutes? Six? Domeric glanced between them as he took a step forward. “I was wondering if I could cut in and steal you for a minute.” 

“Give us two more minutes?” Sansa asked, significantly more pleasant about it than Theon would have been if the roles were reversed. She flashed Domeric a tight smile when he nodded and complied with the request. As soon as he was out of earshot, she stood up and brushed her dress out. Theon followed suit and stretched his arms out for a farewell hug.

She lingered in his arms, her lips pressing against the shell of his ear in a way that didn’t make him shiver at _all_, because that would be _weird_. “Come to my room after the rose ceremony tomorrow. I’ll send Brienne to get you after it’s over." He tried not to crack a joke about her inviting him to his place without even buying him dinner first, but held back for the sake of keeping the conversation serious. "I need to tell you something.”

He caught a glimpse of Domeric’s reflection as they swayed back and forth, as if they were dancing and not embracing, and nuzzled his nose into her hair, just to rub it in his face considering he cut their conversation short for whatever bullshit he wanted to speak with her about. “Sounds good.”

Eventually, she extracted herself from their hug and leaned forward to peck him on the cheek.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Theon,” she announced loudly, as if to disguise their friendly conversation as a deep secret-sharing session.

“Yeah, of course.” Theon responded, squeezing her hand once before withdrawing from her with a wry smile. If he bumped him in the shoulder passive-aggressively when he left, that was no one’s business.

It wasn’t that he disliked the guy, really, but he couldn’t get over that fucking interruption. He’d waited patiently for the guys before him to finish their own conversations with her. So what if he wasn’t a real contestant? Domeric didn’t know that, and it just- it just pissed him off, that was all. It was disrespectful.

The rest of the evening was spent throwing back glasses of white wine and getting to know the other guys there in a less crowded environment. Asher was making an ass of himself and dancing like a madman while Lancel played some tune on the grand piano in the parlor to entertain them with. For all of his weird fixations on the gods, he could play pretty decently. A religious pianist was probably the strangest angle he had ever seen to someone on a reality television show. Seeing him smile made his presence significantly less jarring than it had been before, so Theon joined in on the fun by scarfing down as many hors d'oeuvres as he could manage to tide him over. This time they were little pieces of shrimp, skewered by a stick with some kind of lunch meat wrapped around them. They weren’t half bad, although it might have just been the sixth glass of wine he’d drunk making it taste better.

Griff ended up getting the group date rose for the day, a small pretty thing pinned to the front of his suit jacket after Sansa announced that she was grateful for the chance to get to know them over the course of the date. They all hugged her as they left, though he noticed that no one was bold enough to go in for a kiss yet.

And so they returned to the mansion for another uneventful night.

* * *

The next morning went the same as it had before.

Elissa made them react to Willas getting the last date card for the week, the infuriating boat pun on the card tipping Theon off to the fact that he probably wouldn’t get the boat date he had been wanting, after all.

Whatever.

He’d buy his own yacht (or whatever boat rich people invested in) once he got famous off this show. If he had to sacrifice his pride and sell gummy worms online to afford it, so be it. Better yet, Sansa could make it up to him by paying for him to go on a cruise or something once this was all over. He would probably die if they were sent on a picnic or an apple-picking date once it was his turn to go on a solo outing with her. What would they even do on one of those dates considering he was the literal only guy here not trying to get into her pants or heart, or both?

Theon tried to control the disappointment on his face when Willas headed out of the house in some cargo shorts and a floral button-down shirt.

It was wasted on him anyhow.

For all that the guys seemed to stress about Willas’ presence there after getting the first impression rose, Theon wasn’t worried.

It wasn’t that Theon didn’t like him or anything, because Willas hadn’t technically even done anything wrong. He just… wasn’t right for Sansa. Barely any of these guys were, but Willas was probably the most bookish, boring man Theon had ever met in his entire life.

He would sweep some girl off her feet someday, Theon was sure, but not Sansa.

A life with Willas would just be complacency at its finest with boring double dates and so many nights in watching Netflix that she’d go stir crazy and end up breaking things off after half a year. He knew her well enough to know that she needed someone exciting. Someone who could make her laugh and squirm and make her eggs in the way she liked it and keep her satisfied in every way she wanted to be satisfied. 

She deserved a love that was epic and exciting, not one where she was bound to fall asleep in the middle of a mediocre round of pity sex at 9:00 PM.

She just deserved better than that guy.

So no, it wasn’t that Theon didn’t like Willas. He just didn’t like Willas for Sansa.

But he went on the date anyways and Theon spent the day trying to do a puzzle with Podrick, Hugh, and Rakharo that Ros had snuck in for them to mess around with while all the other guys either drowned in their boredom or the booze in the cabinets that mysteriously managed to restock itself twice a day.

* * *

As they had been warned ahead of time, there was no mention of the spy plan at all in the house. The moments the show actually aired between Theon and Sansa were isolated as they whispered unintelligible things to each other on the couch in lighting that almost made it look romantic. The show was still trying to play up the mystery angle of it, though it seemed pretty obvious to him who it was just by watching their scenes together. Robb knew better than to interpret those 'romance' scenes as anything other than snazzy editing and choppy audio bits that misled the audience into thinking they were into each other.

Her dates seemed kind of uneventful, to the point where Rickon started playing around with a rubik’s cube while Lya coached him on what color to move where from where they were sitting on the beanbag in the corner of the room.

It was boring as hell.

She got massages done with Trystane which ended up being the worst part of the date. They had kissed some, yeah, but the reaction they got for it online was worse than the date itself. Jeyne couldn’t stop raving about what a heartthrob he was and how there were already Instagram accounts dedicated to his relationship with Sansa with shoddily made edits of their first meeting and the spinning hug they gave each other outside of the venue.

Her one with Willas was a little better, if only because he had fed her different kinds of fish that had her face twisting comically with disgust.

Robb smirked down at his phone as Sansa pinned a rose onto her date’s jacket. 

> **margaerytyrell (direct message): **He’s a little dull, isn’t he?
> 
> **robbbbstark (direct message): **Thank you! I thought I was going crazy over here! He’s… nice, I guess.
> 
> **margaerytyrell (direct message): **Oh? Has he ‘got qualities’?
> 
> **robbbbstark (direct message): **Stooop
> 
> **robbbbstark (direct message): **Let the meme die
> 
> **margaerytyrell (direct message): **Never 😜 

Was he lovestruck? Maybe a little. Or a lot, but who could blame him?

Margaery Tyrell was _beautiful_, inside and outside, and for some inexplicable reason had chosen to DM him over the course of the week with niche memes and random jokes as if she didn’t expect him to have a heart attack every time her name lit up on his screen. She had been live-tweeting him personally throughout the episode and revealed herself to be as funny as she was good at… pretty much everything else, really. She used to be a pageant queen before she auditioned to be on The Bachelor and used to throw knives for her talent.

How hot was that? A _knife-thrower_. Never mind that Arya could do that too, because that was just not something he wanted to think about when it was a hot girl doing it instead. Aside from that, little things she told him just seemed to make him fall even harder and harder for her. Margaery was practically his dream girl, especially as they kept chatting about mundane little things like television and books and their favorite singers.

She had a dog of her own, a little black lab named Rose, and they even built up a Snapchat streak (of six days, not that he was counting) just sending each other pictures of their dogs. She was funny and spirited and exceeded every expectation he had of her; she was beautiful, it was true, but she was so much more than that.

“Theon,” Sansa called out first on the television, twirling her rose around between her fingers as Theon stepped forward in an outfit that looked painfully familiar to them all.

> **robbbbstark: **Impeccable taste in outfits. Is a salmon blazer ever NOT an iconic piece of fashion? #TheonTheTrendsetter #SalmonBlazer
> 
> **aryastark (replying to robbbbstark)****:** @Twitter how do I delete someone else’s post
> 
> **rickstarks: **this is the ugliest suit ive ever seen in my entire life
> 
> **thebranbot420 (replying to rickstarks): **I can't believe he wore that in front of real people. #TheBachelorette
> 
> **robbbbstark: **@krakenboiii stay strong, Theon Greyjoy. Don’t listen to the haters. Your jacket is beautiful. You are seen. #TheBachelorette
> 
> **aryastark (replying to robbbbstark):** [image attached]
> 
> **margaerytyrell (replying to aryastark):** I like the blazer. It has personality.
> 
> **robbbbstark (replying to margaerytyrell): **I’m glad someone around here’s got good taste. The salmon blazer is bomb.
> 
> **margaerytyrell (replying to robbbbstark):** Can’t disagree there.
> 
> **rickstarks (replying to margaerytyrell and robbbbstark): **just bone already

As Sansa pinned her next rose onto Dickon, Arya snorted out loud and abruptly clambered to her feet. Ignoring Gendry’s curious look thrown her way, she rushed to where her mother was sitting, a hand in the bowl of nachos she was sharing with Ned. Arya flashed her unlocked phone in her mother's face amidst laughter.

“Podrick,” Sansa’s soft voice came through their sound system as another message dinged on Robb’s phone. He didn’t pay attention to the whole ‘will you accept this rose’ speech when the direct message on his phone was jumping out at him.

> **margaerytyrell (direct message)**: I think it would be cuter on you.

“Rickon!” Catelyn chided her youngest son halfheartedly as Ned scooped enough guacamole for a small army onto his chip. “What you post on social media is there forever. If I were an employer and I took a look at your Twitter account and saw that you were telling strangers to-”

“Arya,” Rickon groaned as Sansa called Asher over, burying his face in the pillow resting on Lya Mormont’s lap. She barely took notice of the action, instead focused on playing whatever game she was distracting herself with on her phone. His next question was muffled by the pillow, but was discernible enough for Robb to hear. “Why?”

“If you’re going to watch, just watch the show,” Gendry grumbled out, pretty much the only member of the (honorary) family who opted not to live-tweet the show as it aired. It was never really clear whether he enjoyed it or not, but then again, that went for pretty much every non-Arya thing in his life. “Gods, can’t you shut your mouth for once, Rick?”

“Your girlfriend started it,” Lya snapped defensively, her fingers carding through Rickon’s curls as he twisted on her lap to stick his tongue out at Gendry victoriously. "Don't point the finger at him when she did it."

Bran sighed loudly. “Can we save this until it’s over? As riveting as this is-”

“Guys,” Jeyne whined, taking a long sip of her drink that left a little red wine-stache above her lips. “Come on, I want to watch Sansa fall in love. Argue later please.”

“Shove that up your-“ Lya started, ever the firecracker when her not-quite-boyfriend was concerned. They were both terrors and even worse together, though they had yet to label anything. Whenever anyone asked Rickon, he would get that panicked look in his eyes that Jon did whenever anyone asked him about his plans for the future.

“She said please,” Jon reminded Lyanna firmly, sounding very much like he would rather be laying in bed than spending another minute in the Stark sitting room. He sounded more exhausted than anyone, having just come there from a long day at work to watch her season in solidarity with the rest of them

They loved Sansa, they did, but two and a half hours was a commitment when it came to watching her fall in love.

Even Robb had grown tired after the constant barrage of commercials.

Despite his sad substitute teacher energy, everyone seemed to actually take Jon’s final warning to heed for some reason. The family settled back down as the ceremony continued, more men returning to their spots with roses pinned to their jackets.

Jeyne kissed Jon’s cheek softly as Sansa called on Lancel and then Domeric.

The camera panned to Theon’s somewhat annoyed face at the announcement that Domeric was staying, though Robb had definitely seen him worse off. Honestly, his expression seemed more like he was cranky and sleepless, although the show tried to make it seem borne out of resentment. It was probably an editing trick or something. 

> **thebranbot420:** broke: dickon, domeric, griff.
> 
> **thebranbot420:** woke: trystane, PODRICK, willas
> 
> ** aryastark retweeted this**
> 
> **jeynepoolesxx:** as an unbiased bff, if sansa doesn’t choose trystane, we riot.
> 
> **yaraskraken:** I cant believe my little brother’s wearing THAT on tv
> 
> **robbbbstark (replying to yaraskraken):** come on, it’s stylish
> 
> **yaraskraken:** Blocked.
> 
> ** thedragonqueen retweeted this**

“And we’ve come to our final rose for the evening.” Oberyn Martell’s breezy voice came over the speaker, as the camera panned to several men who hadn’t gotten roses yet. “Unfortunately, this journey ends for five men tonight. Sansa… whenever you’re ready.”

After a few moments of drawn out tension, Sansa exhaled sharply. “Rakharo.”

The man stepped forward with a grin, immediately making a beeline for her.

The camera panned back over to some of the rejects- Jasper, both of the Jons, Leo, and Owen as Rakharo accepted her rose, smugly going back to stand in line beside Dickon while the eliminated men said their final goodbyes for the night.

“Next time… on the Bachelorette” Oberyn’s voice sounded as the screen faded to the logo of Sansa twirling her rose around with the block words 'The Bachelorette' flashing across the screen. “Some things can’t be kept a secret for long.”

“What do you mean there’s a mole in the house?” Dickon demanded from a producer angrily while Asher stood behind him, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

“There’s a spy,” Colin spoke directly into the camera, light brown hair messed up as he scoffed with disbelief at the producer-fed information. “There’s a guy here who’s not even into her and he’s been here the whole bloody time. I feel lied to. Does she even know that he’s here?”

Clips of Podrick, Theon, Hugh, and Rakharo flashed across the screen as he finished his sentence as if to indicate to the audience that it could have been any of them.

“And tensions in the house boil over,” Oberyn announced as Dickon was shown shoving Trystane, the other man’s hands raised in the air as he smiled over at him sardonically. They were outdoors wearing swim trunks while a variety of other guys watched on.

“They’re both in the bloody wrong,” Podrick burst out frustratedly as Dickon and Trystane were shown walking away from each other, both of them looking properly pissed off.

“And things start to heat up,” Oberyn concluded as footage of Podrick cupping Sansa’s cheek spliced with-

Robb nearly choked on his caprisun.

“Is that _Theon_?” Jeyne exclaimed, reeling back at the sight of Theon standing in the middle of some barn house and Sansa pressed against him, her fingers twining through his hair as they made out under a bunch of fairy lights.

The clip lasted far too long to be altered and was _way_ more than the chaste not-kisses they had agreed to before going on the show. By the looks of it, they didn’t seem to be coming up for air anytime soon.

He couldn’t look away. 

Sansa was leaning into _Theon_ and tilting her head into the kiss, and Theon was pulling her closer to him like they were a _couple_ and not— Robb’s train of thought flew out the window as his eyes zeroed in on Theon’s hand, resting just a little too low on the small of Sansa’s back as they made out like two horny teenagers and not full grown adults who had known each other for their entire lives.

“What the fuck?” Arya cackled to break the silence as if it was the funniest thing in the world and not a trauma that would be ingrained in Robb’s mind until the day he died.

Even Ned was whispering urgently to Catelyn, as if they were as confused by this as everyone else was.

Why were they making out like that? Was it for television? Was it a dare? It was probably a challenge of some sort, right? A ‘make out and you’ll get $500’ type of challenge if those even existed on this kind of show? Maybe people figured out that Theon was the mole and they did it to prove a point?

The fruit juice he had been drinking was dribbling down his chin as he stared the screen down with perplexity.

Confusion crashed over him at the prospect of them hooking up in any capacity, recalling with abject horror that one time Theon had drunkenly confessed to having a sex dream about Sansa while they were seniors in college and played it off as a joke when Robb got angry about it the next morning.

It was as if all their interactions had now come into question; Robb gritted his teeth in remembrance of the way Sansa had hung all over Theon the night of her 23rd birthday in her drunken Sansa way, or how she loudly complained that same New Year’s about how she had no one to kiss while she was in the Uber with Theon, Robb, and Jeyne Westerling. As if she wanted to kiss _someone _who just wasn’t getting the hint. 

He thought about all the times they got a little too close for his comfort and all of the cuddling and the physical affection that he hadn’t thought to be suspicious of until now, and tried to think of the last girl Theon had even bothered to introduce to him. It was years ago now. 

It was paranoia at its worst and was probably an exaggeration (_it’s just for show_, Robb told himself soothingly, _it’s just for show_), but he couldn’t shake his discomfort at the thought. 

Before Robb could start processing what he had just seen, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the misleading clips of Sansa crying and hugging some brown-haired guy on-screen, Jon was calling Theon and putting it on speakerphone.

After a few moments of ringing, it went to voicemail.

“Hey, go for Theon. Leave a message at the tone.”

“Theon,” Jon started in a deceptively calm voice, though anyone who knew him knew otherwise. He was as concise as ever, the effect of his lack of reaction hitting more terrifyingly than if he had reacted differently. “We have to have some words. Call me back.”

Two more attempts were made, but Theon wasn’t picking up.

He was either avoiding them or wasn’t allowed to speak with them yet. Or they were still filming and he didn’t have access to his phone.

“That’s so fucking gross,” Rickon exclaimed, shooting Bran a look. The next show on the docket was already beginning to play, though the vibe in the Stark living room had changed drastically upon seeing what they saw. “Your spoilers say anything about that?”

“Who’s to say,” Bran responded dryly, though he made no effort to elaborate.

Robb was beginning to swap out one breakdown for another when he got another text.

> **margaerytyrell (direct message): **I guess I’m not the only one who thinks it's cute.
> 
> **margaerytyrell (direct message):** Are you busy on Friday?


	6. Week Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the second week of Sansa's season of The Bachelorette ensues, connections begin to form and realizations are had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming out of my cave to post this extra long update for y'all! Grad school is hectic so this is probably my last update for a couple of months, but I promise I'm not abandoning this.

Unsurprisingly, her room was larger than any of the other rooms in the mansion. It had a regal quality to it, with burgundy walls and polished furniture that looked straight out of an old movie. It wasn’t something he usually would have associated with Sansa, but it seemed to suit her just fine. It was way more glamorous than the plain room he occupied with three beds shoved into it, considering that she didn’t have any roommates to put up with.

Getting in there at all had proven to be a trial in itself—one where he had been shaken awake by a haggard PA who introduced herself as Jacelyn, was then smuggled outside by Mara on camera crew, ushered into a separate building by an impatient Ros, and then led upstairs by a stern blond woman who seemed to shadow Sansa everywhere she went. He had unceremoniously gotten a good shove in the back before the door slammed behind him and it was almost as if they had never left Winterfell at all. If not for the climate, he’d have been none the wiser. King’s Landing wasn’t even hot in a good way; it was just… humid.

He was counting the days until he could get to leave this damned city already. No matter where they went, at least he was comforted with the fact that it wouldn’t be King’s Landing.

Sansa’s hair was bunched up into a bun on top of her head with a few strands poking upwards defiantly, as if she had hastily done it moments before he had come in. The oversized blue _The Wolves_ hockey jersey Robb had given her back in university made her look like it was just another night at home and not a clandestine meeting away from the camera crews, for once. He wondered what his mother would think of it all. She had always loved this kind of show, but he didn’t have the stones to tell her he was going on it for himself, instead leaving it to Yara to let her know. And as for Balon… he didn’t even want to _think_ of his father in any capacity as it was, let alone one in which he was watching Theon pretend to get it on with his best mate’s little sister on television.

Not that he and Sansa weren’t friends in their own right, but the sentiment still stood.

He settled on top of her floral duvet after he had kicked his shoes off, still not quite awake as she began talking at a mile a minute about whatever movie she had been watching on her laptop (_When Harry Met Sally_, Theon just barely managed to recognize the film by the screencap of them in bed together) as she raced to offer him some of the pizza she had been eating prior to his arrival. He could only stare blankly at the three slices in the box once she thrust it at him as his mind struggled to catch up to what was happening. Her lips quirked upward in amusement at his brain-freeze, holding the box up a little higher for him.

“I have a coffee-maker in the kitchen if you need a pick-me-up,” She suggested gently.

“Sorry,” he reached for a slice once he came to. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration. Shooting the rose ceremony had taken about seven hours for absolutely no reason at all, and the lot of them had been sent packing to bed at five in the morning. He had been frustrated out of his mind as filming dragged on and on with nothing for them to do but chat amongst themselves and drink the champagne they were offered.

They weren’t allowed to eat either because of microphone interference. The pauses in between Sansa coming out to award one rose at a time had been a different brand of torture.

“I should have warned you,” she threw a smile his way before she flung herself back onto the bed carelessly, her shorts inexplicably drawing his eye for a moment before he forced himself to look away. “Rose ceremonies take _forever_. They’re even longer with girls. Between all the makeup retouches and the drama, we had one that took thirteen hours.”

“_Thirteen_ hours?” Theon repeated incredulously, unable to fathom having to stand there for that long just to wait for someone to call his name. “Gods, I’d have just quit.”

“Mm,” Sansa hummed in agreement as her eyes flicked back to her laptop screen as if debating whether to turn it off or finishing the movie with him here. She crinkled her nose as she made a joke at her own expense, likely remembering how _After The Final Rose_ had gone for her. “Considering how that turned out, we all probably should have.”

A photograph of a face in the corner of her room caught his eye before he could muster up a halfhearted ‘no, you couldn’t have known’ to her statement.

There was a board propped up against her door covered in pictures and strings tying them together with the occasional peppering of handwritten post-it notes around them. It looked like the sort of thing he saw on detective shows, complete with the red string and all.

He squinted at the board to get a better look at what she actually thought about these guys beyond secondhand comments from producers or hastily whispered asides.

He could see the word ‘PRIEST’ scrawled onto a yellow note underneath Lancel’s unflattering headshot (though none of them really seemed to have done anyone justice, least of all his own), followed by scribbled notes about his religious upbringing. There were tons of them, neatly spread out over the board like she was planning a war strategy and not trying to decide what guy she liked the most. Was this how Sansa kept track of who was who?

There was a post-it that seemed more dreamily written than the others, each word curling in that fancy way Sansa always wrote her additions to Cat’s grocery lists back in high school.

The note in question was posted directly underneath the photo of Willas: ‘Dream Date: Stargazing’ with a smattering of stars drawn around the words. He faintly smiled at how she crisscrossed her stars, recalling how she fussed over decorating his graduation cap for him when he told her that he wouldn’t be doing anything with it. He had proudly gone to commencement with a neat multi-colored assortment of hearts and stars littering his cap, fancying it was funnier than it was embarrassing (as he had initially feared when she made the suggestion.)

Trystane and Dickon had the most of her commentary by a long shot, and a yellow note with ‘DORNISH PASTRIES’ underlined three times was pinned onto the edge of Trystane’s photo. He couldn’t make out what else she wrote about them given how tiny her handwriting was, but it seemed complimentary based on the occasional hearts and smiley faces he saw doodled onto their post-it notes.

He wondered if she thought about Harry and the choices he made leading up to her dumping. It had to be a good thing that she had thrown herself back into the game so quickly, right? Robb always spent upwards of half a year mourning his ex-girlfriends just to backslide with them as soon as one of them hit him up on Snapchat. She may have been preparing to marry a bunch of guys she met a week ago, but at least she wasn’t coping in the Robb-fashion by going back to Hardyng or something.

There was a drawing of a boat on a blue note directly beneath Theon’s awkward-looking headshot. He smiled slightly at the sight before tearing his eyes away from it.

“So,” he started with a waggle of his brows. “Who’s getting the next one-on-one?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Sansa laughed as she tossed her laptop onto the rug beneath the bed, evidently deciding against subjecting Theon to _When Harry Met Sally_ for the third time. “It’s not like I pick the dates. I give Brienne a list of who I like every week and production sets it all up. I’m fine with it, for now. I don’t want to-” she reached blindly for the glass of red wine behind her, somehow managing not to tip it over. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself again. And I trust Brienne to… to push me in the right direction.”

She took a drawn-out sip, rimming her lips with the purple of the wine.

Theon frowned, recalling how worried she had been earlier, days ago during the cocktail party, about what the guys thought of her and whether they liked her or not. He hadn’t seen anything glaring yet, really, but it hadn’t even occurred to him that any of the guys _weren’t_ into her. What was there to dislike? She was hotter than any of her other contenders for the job, and a hell of a lot more established and interesting than they could ever hope to be. He could feel his brows come together as he processed her insecurities for what they were.

“Shut up,” her voice cut through his thoughts like a knife, prompting an unrestrained smile to flash across his face at the pseudo-irritated, pseudo-pouty look on her face.

“I didn’t even say anything,” he retorted without much heat to it, eyes alight with amusement as soon as she leveled him with a haughty look and downed the rest of her wine in one go.

“You didn’t have to. I could hear you thinking,” she sighed, wiping her mouth before hesitating as she reached for another slice. “Are you going to eat any of this? I thought you’d want to get some real food in you again. It’s practically a cage in the mansion, right?”

“It’s unbearable,” he agreed, complying with her request and shoving a piece of the not-quite cold pizza into his mouth. “Don’t know how I’m gonna last another month in there.”

“Sometimes they’ll let you watch television when you go abroad,” she informed him helpfully as she clambered off the bed and searched through her minifridge for something to drink. “It’s usually around the third or fourth week.” She procured a bottle of sparkling cider for herself before tossing him a coy smile. He rolled over onto his stomach to make some space for her when she began making her way back over to where he was resting. “Brienne told me they’re getting us clearance to go to Lorath, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Anything beats being here,” he paused for a moment, deliberating on whether to let her comment from earlier die or not. Before he could stop himself, he knocked her shoulder with his own gently, noting that she seemed more insecure than he had ever seen her—why, he couldn’t tell, considering she had a dozen other attractive guys fighting over her. “They’d be crazy not to fall for you, you know that? You don’t have anything to worry about, Sans.”

She frowned at him. “How do you know that? Like, know that for a fact? I bet half of these guys applied hoping that it would be Margaery or-”

“Hey,” Theon stopped her in her tracks, eyes zeroing in on the garlic bread knot she was holding between her fingers before they refocused on her face. “Don’t think like that. It’s gonna drive you insane if you do. If they weren’t into you, they would have sent themselves home. But they didn’t. All of them want dates with you because they like _you_, Sansa Stark.”

Sansa pursed her lips, rolling her eyes in disbelief when Theon snatched the knot out of her fingers to dip into the garlic sauce balanced precariously on the corner of the box.

“Sorry,” Theon apologized sheepishly, not sounding like he meant it at all. “You were right about the food though. All the stuff at the mansion’s utter shit. The hors d’oeuvres are the only decent things, and they only give those to us when you’re around. It’s criminal.”

“I’ll try to smuggle you some snacks when I can,” Sansa chimed in, her face breaking out into a smile at the sight of something so familiar as Theon Greyjoy stuffing his face with food in her bedroom. If she closed her eyes, it was almost like Robb and Jeyne and Jon and Arya were right there too, cramped into Robb and Theon’s old double. “Our little secret.”

“Can’t wait to make all the other guys jealous with my secret cheeseburgers,” he grinned. “You’re gonna bring me ice cream too, right? That’ll drive them all up the bloody wall.”

Sansa snorted as she swiped another garlic bread knot from the container Theon was all but hogging. Her smile faded as she lifted it to her lips. “Do you really mean it though?”

“That they like you?” Theon asked her disbelievingly. “Sansa, you’re a hot girl. I’m sure they like you for your personality too, but they all seem pretty into you already. It’s only the second week. You’ve got time to fall in love and find the guy you want to get married to and have babies with, or whatever you’re trying to find on TV in front of all of Westeros.”

Silence resounded between them for a moment.

“I need to tell you something,” her voice trembled the slightest bit, though it was clear she was trying to keep it even. She seemed jittery and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Theon?”

Had she finally killed that trucker on set who kept calling her ‘little bird’ and leering at her like she wasn’t the face of a multi-million gold dragon international network? Had she embezzled money? Broken contract? Decided she was ready to pack up and go home?

“Yeah, I’m here.” He responded a little more brashly than he intended. “I’m all ears. You know I won’t judge you. Whatever you uh, did…” he recalled every disciplinary action he had faced in school and the stupid antics in college that landed him in hot water with admin. He’d been on academic probation until he graduated. “I’m sure I’ve done worse. I promise.”

Her eyes softened somewhat. She pushed herself backward on the bed to sit cross-legged and wiped the grease from the pizza onto her covers (a move Theon never thought he would see from her; he could still recall how she drunkenly shouted at Jon for half an hour for not using a coaster at her dorm and getting coke stains all over her white table) before drawing in a deep breath. Whatever she had done, it seemed to be eating her alive. Theon absentmindedly wondered if she _had_ murdered someone—Ned surely had enough money to keep her out of jail, right? As he was contemplating how much time he would serve as an accessory to whatever crime she was about to fess up to, she wrung her hands together.

“I let Trystane finger me in the sauna,” she blurted out. “And I liked it. And I feel horrible because what if he thinks I’m a slag_,_ or not worth staying here for, or tells all the other guys and they think I’m easy and they’ll want to go home? And I walked out on him freaking out and gods, he must think I just used him. I don’t think they got it on camera, but I don’t want him to feel like…” She was speaking faster than he could keep up, her eyes frantic as she went on. “Theon, you’re quiet. Why are you quiet? Tell me it’s not as bad as I think it is.”

“No way,” he laughed to himself, unable to imagine _Sansa_ getting _fingered _in a_ sauna_ and then suddenly, he was imagining it and his mouth felt dry. Half-naked and sweating with her head tilted back, and her eyes—snapping himself out of the unwelcome line of thought was all he could do to keep his body from reacting to it. He sounded a little breathless as he continued laughing, but he doubted she noticed given the way she was serving him a pretty heavy deadpan. “No fucking way. On the first date? In a _sauna_? Who’d have thought it?”

Gods, if only they gave him a phone or something to watch or anything else to focus on, really, to keep him from noticing how… different she looked to before this. Before she was on The_ Bachelor_, even. It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed she was beautiful. It’s all anyone ever talked about at home, at school, on the show, at Yara’s bar, but it was never as distracting as it was now. She was a hot girl. What was he supposed to think? Occasionally, he’d thought about it (he was only human) but he never entertained the thought of her in any intimate positions. Even watching her cuddle up to Harry Hardyng in bed on his season, he hadn’t allowed himself to go down this hole and now… this place was going to drive him mad.

It wasn’t about _her_, he reasoned to himself, allowing himself this one lie to tell himself. It was just because of the environment. Anyone else would have reacted the same way in these circumstances; it was just natural after a bombshell like _that_ had been dropped that his mind would have filled in the blanks for him. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to be attracted to someone, even a little bit, and not be into them in any other way. If anything, this just proved now more than ever how desperately he needed to see someone else naked to clear his head.

“Theon,” she whined and he thanked every deity out there that she couldn’t see through him for his bizarre thoughts, and suddenly it was like all was right in the world again. She was the same brat she always was with narrowed eyes and drawn brows. “Be serious, please.”

He sat up properly this time, not wanting her to feel worse than she already did.

“Hey,” he centered her with a hand on either shoulder. “You’re not messing anything up. This has _definitely_ happened before on this kind of show. I mean, every set-up’s basically screaming ‘please hook up for a live audience.’ It’s not like you actually slept with him and even if you did… so what? Who’s going to tell on you? If you’re going to be marrying the guy anyway, you might as well know what he’s packing.”

It took a moment for the words to register in her head and before long, the softness in Sansa’s eyes was replaced by annoyance. She shoved him in the chest with a snort, a dash of red staining her cheeks as the implications really set in. “You’re so stupid.”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he held onto the hand at his chest and made an exaggerated kissing face at her, his body shaking with laughter as she cringed away.

“Gross,” she sighed before lifting her eyes to meet his again. “Thanks, Theon.”

Sobering up somewhat, he shrugged. “You don’t need to thank me. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s natural to want to uh… test your chemistry when you’re trying to get to know somebody. I mean, I can’t think of a first date where I _didn’t_-”

“I really don’t want to know,” Sansa snickered, ducking her head with eyes full of unshed tears despite her attempt at joking, shrugging her shoulders once as she expanded on her feelings. “I really needed to hear that. That I didn’t mess this up beyond repair. I just… I got swept away, I guess. I really do like him, though. Trystane.”

There was a sudden pressure on his chest that he didn’t bother trying to decode. Maybe it was just heartburn from all the pizza he had eaten after days of being forced to eat healthy. If he even had to _look_ at the pack of mixed nuts in the house again, he would lose his shit.

“C’mere,” he extended an arm to Sansa to which she immediately crawled forward, curling into him as soon as they made contact. It took a few moments of adjustment, but they soon found themselves sitting in comfortable silence with Sansa’s legs strewn across Theon’s lap. He smiled softly at her compassionately, knowing without a doubt that she would gain her confidence back once she had a little longer to get used to this. If anyone could take the pressure, it was her. “You’ve got this. And all the guys like you. You should see how they freaked out about all the date cards. They basically run over each other to get to them.”

“Really?” She asked timidly, her words muffled by his shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t even write them,” she admitted with a sniff. “It’s all Brella.”

He didn’t bother telling her that he knew it wasn’t her handwriting on the cards. It’s not like any of the other guys could figure it out. Besides, the cards were just a sentence or two. It’s not like Sansa writing them would make them any more personal to anyone, so it made sense.

“Damn,” he replied with a laugh. “That’s romance for you, I guess.”

* * *

Sansa had been alone for all of five minutes before Brienne was pushing her way into her room with an apologetic grimace on her face. Did no one sleep around here?

It wasn’t that her company was unwelcome, especially considering how isolated she was with having to hole up in her suite alone for entire days at a time, but Sansa could kiss goodbye any change of getting much sleep. She loved her small team of producers for the most part, though she could have done without Dontos being assigned to her. Gwyn and Sera, however, made for invaluable companions. At this point, it felt like she spent more time with the crew than any of the guys—and thus, it was becoming harder and harder to imagine herself forming real connections in spite of doing so (or thinking she did) with Harry.

It was a terrifying thought; that they had gone through all the effort to orchestrate Sansa meeting and falling in love with her future spouse just to end up miserable and alone.

_It’s worked for some people_, Sansa reminded herself once her anxiety began to take hold. There was a higher success rate for Bachelorettes than there were for bachelors. She would be fine. She was careful to guard her heart, it was true, but she trusted Brienne wouldn’t steer her in the wrong direction. Besides, she had Theon looking out for her to make sure she didn’t pick a total prick. This would be fine. _I’m going to be fine. I’ll fall in love with someone amazing and it’ll be fine and I’ll wonder why I ever worried about this at all._

“No rest for the wicked then?” Sansa joked as her producer closed the door behind her and made for the chair beside the TV. If she couldn’t have her phone, at least she had basic cable this time around. She was basically on house arrest, but it could be worse. “If this is about the evening wear for the next date, I already told Melisandre that I didn’t want anything too-”

“It isn’t about your stylist,” Brienne leveled with her, holding out a manila folder with a headshot pinned neatly to the corner with a pink paperclip. “I pulled the information you wanted on Tarly. He’s spotless. Good relationship with his parents, relatively close to his brother, never been married, a stockbroker for Oldtown Brokerage. I have his file in case you want it, but it needs to get back to the on-call therapists before dawn. I triple checked.”

Sansa didn’t take the file. It would feel like a violation somehow to go looking through his personal information without him divulging it to her himself. She knew he had a dog at home, and he had spoken fondly enough about his brother that nothing Brienne was saying was anything she didn’t know. “And you’re sure? There’s nothing… wrong with him?”

It was difficult to ignore that all the men in the mansion seemed to hate him on sight, and she wasn’t willing to risk her heart for a fraud or a cheat. It felt a little dishonest to dig up information about his past, but she couldn’t risk getting attached to someone who wasn’t worthwhile. There was no way to tell what his intentions were, it was true, but she could at least ensure that he wasn’t just a producer-plant to act as a source of drama for ratings.

Brienne’s brows furrowed as if perplexed by Sansa’s skepticism. “I’m sure.”

“I don’t need to read it,” Sansa pursed her lips at the confirmation, feeling a mixture of stress, excitement, and relief course through her. “Thank you, Brienne. I was just…”

“Worried,” Brienne finished with a small smile, crunching the file back underneath her elbow as she leaned back in her chair. “You’re not the first. It’s alright. You like him then?”

Sansa shrugged, not wanting to run away with her fantasies so soon. “I just met him.”

“You can still like him,” she teased her dryly, “I won’t tell anyone.”

At that, Sansa couldn’t help but crack a smile. “He’s charming. One of my favorites right now, honestly. I could see…” she struggled to find the words for it. “-_something_ with him.”

It wasn’t that she was already envisioning her _wedding_ or even an engagement at this point, but there were a few guys who had caught her eye from the start.

There was Willas, for one; she recalled pinning the rose onto his tuxedo on the first night, her hands practically trembling as she tried to work the damn magnet competently enough to get it on. He was older than the other men in the house and though she had never been one for beards before, he made facial hair look oddly attractive. Their one-on-one had been lovely, complete with the occasional kiss and all—it sent electric coursing through her veins, to be so doted on after she had spent an entire season fighting other girls for Harry’s attention.

Trystane was… consuming. There was something about him that made her feel like the only person in the world when he looked at her. There was an undercurrent to his energy, though, that gave off mixed messages; she truthfully couldn’t tell whether he was playing the game or sincere in his attraction towards her, or a blend of the two. He excited her and unnerved her all at once, which she supposed was normal to feel at this stage in the process. She had reservations, of course, in anyone who was confident beyond reproach (anyone who reminded her of Harry, her traitorous mind whispered her own insecurities back at her darkly) but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something real beneath his exterior.

Asher was attractive in his own way, too, as was Griff. He was the tallest guy in the house as a former WFL player and though he was five years older than her, Asher had a spunk to him that made her feel rejuvenated with energy whenever he was around. Domeric was sweet as well, and a paralegal—though she hadn’t felt much of a spark with him from the first, he was good to keep him for now. He was a proper sort with a good job. He was the kind she knew her mother would have cautioned her to keep around if she were here. And sometimes connections weren’t immediate; perhaps he just needed some time to come out of his shell.

The others had all made impressions on her to varying degrees, though production instructed her to keep Lancel and Dickon specifically around for reasons that went unanswered to her. She could only assume that they were planning on shaping some storyline around them, probably involving a manufactured fight that resulted from sleep-deprivation and hunger.

“Brienne,” Sansa started suddenly. “What would you do if you were-”

A rapping at the window sent her jumping in place, her eyes owlish as they turned to see whoever had the poor judgment of trying to break into her room at three in the morning.

Before she had much time to process that there was someone hanging off her window ledge much less see who it was, Brienne was stalking towards the window with the frustration of an underpaid reality television producer and wrenched it open with a huff.

“What are you doing?” She hissed, reaching through the open window to pull the intruder inside the Bachelorette’s suite without any hesitance. “Are you insane? You could have fallen and broken your ankle or your leg, and then where would I be? Juggling ten lawsuits from _your_ father because I didn’t take the precautions to make sure to take-”

Jaime Lannister looked worse for wear with rumpled clothes and a hole poking through his black shirt, though he smirked as he often did as soon as his feet touched the ground.

“-care to child-proof the mansion for you.” Brienne ranted at him in a more exasperated manner than Sansa had ever seen her. “And wipe that _stupid_ smirk off your face right now, Jaime, or I’ll call security, and I swear to all the Gods that I’ll get an ankle bracelet for-”

And then Jaime was tugging her forward by her right hand, tilting his head upward in anticipation for a kiss that seemed so practiced and intimate that Sansa had to look away.

“I missed you too,” Jaime whispered in between kisses. He chuckled as if there was some unspoken inside joke between the pair of them. “Just like old times, hm?”

“You could have fallen then too,” Brienne grumbled, though her voice was somewhat more subdued now. Sansa’s lips quirked upwards at the thought of Jaime breaking into Brienne’s rooms back when he had been the Bachelor years ago, only to send all of his contestants home in favor of publicly declaring his love for his producer. She remembered watching it on television in disbelief, unable to wrap her head around the concept. “You’re an oaf.”

“And you’re beautiful,” he quipped before his eyes swiveled to Sansa clad in her pajamas, feeling somehow like _she_ was the intruder here. “Sansa. You haven’t quit yet, I see.”

“Jaime,” she nodded politely at him, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve still got time.”

At that, his lips stretched into a grin, probably just glad that someone was playing along with him. He bobbed his head once before returning his attention back to his girlfriend who was still standing before him, her folder gripped between her arm and her side as she eyed him with surprisingly soft eyes for all of her bluff and bluster of pretending to be annoyed.

“Come back to bed,” the arrogance in his voice dissipated somewhat as he stepped closer to her, dipping into a low murmur that she probably wasn’t meant to hear. He brushed a hand over Brienne’s cheek, eyes boring into hers carefully. “You know I can’t sleep without you.”

“I know,” she placated him, her hand coming to rest over his before she seemed to remember that they weren’t alone. Brienne cleared her throat and stepped backward before glancing at Sansa awkwardly. “If that’s all you needed, I’ll push your wake-up call back a few hours.”

Sansa’s gaze darted between Brienne and Jaime warmly before she nodded, a little grateful for the reprieve of human company now that her brain was screaming at her to get some sleep already. It had been a long day, all things considered. “Thanks, Brie. I’ll see you.”

Brienne merely smiled at the nickname and bowed her head once before reaching back to blindly grasp at Jaime’s hand. He took it instantly, following her as she led him out of the room that he had likely occupied himself five years ago.

They left the room silently, their fading footsteps an eventual indicator that she was alone again. Sansa sighed, forcing herself to get up out of bed so that she could shut the window and turn off the lamp beside her nightstand, her mind racing with anticipation in the upcoming days as she settled back into her bed. It was only the second week. She had time.

* * *

By the time Theon dragged himself out of the shower, the guys were already making breakfast downstairs. A few of them went out swimming as soon as they could manage it, judging from the sound of the splashing outside. The mansion’s camera crew were more lax than usual, with a handful of people standing around the house, most notably Davos lingering near the entrance wearing a duck-billed cap and sunglasses.

Theon let out an exhale of relief at the realization that it wouldn’t be Elissa with them today—her energy got the entire group of them on-edge as it was, and it was like her eyes could see through every single one of them. He just didn’t like her vibes, that was all.

“What’s going on, mate?” Trystane called out as Theon’s eyes sifted over Podrick’s sleeping form on the couch, evidently tuckered out by the mere act of waking up. His eyes snapped over to where Trystane was trying to open a box on the kitchen counter, clad in a tank-top and board shorts. He could see why Sansa was so drawn to him. He was hot, that was clear to anyone with eyes. “You missed breakfast.”

“Needed the beauty sleep,” Theon walked towards the other man, figuring he’d at least try to make a connection with Sansa’s frontrunner. “Where’d the others get off to?”

“Chataya came in and wanted to pull Willas, Dickon, and Lancel,” Trystane replied evenly, though something was underlaying his words. His brows were drawn together as he ripped open a bag of pop tarts with careful consideration not to get crumbs on the counter in front of him. He locked eyes with Theon then, his own hard and calculating as he dropped two pop tarts into the toaster. “They’re her guys. Chataya’s. I wouldn’t take advice from her if I were you if she ever tries to offer it. I heard about what this place can do to people.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Theon tried not to let his suspicion take ahold of him as Trystane looked up at him with surprised eyes. “I’m just saying, man, that’s a really-”

“Pragmatic approach?” He finished, his lips quirking upward. “Yeah, I’ve been told. I’m just trying not to get sent home or made out to be a nutcase on television. You’ve gotta be careful, you know? I heard they try to get under your skin. Get you drunk first, then get you talking. Taena told me not to talk to anyone but her. I like you, man. You seem like-”

“What’s up, party people?” Asher called out as he trudged down the stairs, barely sparing anyone a second glance as he clapped one of the PAs on the shoulder and ricocheted out the door. Theon barely had a moment to process the interaction before he heard the telltale sound of a splash outside from the pool, followed by someone (Colin?) whooping with laughter.

“A good guy,” Trystane sighed as the pop tarts flew out of the toaster. He pulled a plate out of the upper cabinet as one of the sound guys came in through the back door, leisurely placing a cup of iced coffee on the countertop before turning back around. Though he wasn’t paying attention, Trystane still offered his thanks to his retreating back. “Thanks, Duncan.”

“You can ask them for stuff?” Theon paused at the realization that the various crewmembers around the house weren’t just props. “I didn’t know you could ask them for stuff.”

Trystane raised his brows as he reached for his breakfast, gingerly putting it on his plate to avoid burning himself on it. “Yeah. Remember their names and they’ll probably do you a solid. That’s Duncan right there. The one near the door’s Davos, with the beard and the cap. The blonde girl next to him? That’s Morgan. She’s on lights. Guy over there’s Damien. He’s the DP so he’s around a lot. Pretty busy though, so I’d advise against asking him for shit.”

“Huh,” Theon mused, trying to catalog the names in his head for future reference. Maybe they’d actually sneak him a cellphone if he made an effort to interact with them. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the other man smiled at him before returning his attention to the food in front of him, looking at his iced coffee like it had just offered him a rose and a one-on-one at once.

“I’m just saying, she’s probably going to want to-” Rakharo practically burst into the house with Lancel and Griff hot on his heels, one of them visibly tenser than the other.

“I’m not talking about this with you,” Lancel replied in a monotone as he swerved to the side, fully dressed, unlike the other men, his lips tight while Griff slung a towel over his shoulder. “That’s a bridge Sansa and I will cross if we get to it. And it’s not _your_ concern.”

“You can’t tell me you wouldn’t want to show her a good time,” Griff drawled, his tone of voice leaving almost nothing to the imagination. It was a feat in itself for Theon not to jab him in the face with a spatula right then and there. He could feel Trystane straightening beside him, evidently eavesdropping as well. “And if you’re not ready to talk about sex and shit with her, do you really think you’re ready to get married to her? Just think about-”

“I told you,” Lancel gritted his teeth, his long hair hanging in his eyes as cameramen began filtering in with the coffee boy —_Duncan_, Theon reminded himself— holding a long microphone over them to capture the moment. “-to stop pushing me. I don’t want to talk about this, okay? Especially not with you. Now bugger off so I can get coffee in peace.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? _Especially_ not with me?” Griff challenged, droplets of water clinging to his muscled chest. He was built like a model, sculpted at nearly every angle though his scowl told a different story. “Does my _soul_ need to be saved, Septon Lancel?”

Lancel glared at the other man and Theon could see Podrick startle from where he had been napping on the couch, evidently deciding to pretend to be asleep over getting into it with any of them. Trystane merely took a long sip of his coffee as they watched the drama unfold, the uninvolved parties in the conflict seeming to know better than to get involved.

“Don’t mock me,” Lancel replied, clenching his fists to the side as Colin glanced between the pair of them. “Sansa respects my faith, and I’m sure she would love to hear about how you-”

“Anyone want an omelette?” Asher clapped Griff on the shoulder, seeming to appear clean out of nowhere. Picking up on the tension between them (or was that why he intervened in the first place?) he tried to defuse it as best as he could manage to without pissing anyone off further. “It’s too early for this shit, guys. C’mon. Take a breather and let it go.”

Without waiting to hear a response, the blond man slid through the space between Lancel and Griff, shooting the small crowd of people in the kitchen a lazy smile as he joined them before reaching into the fridge for a carton of eggs as if nothing had happened at all. “Any takers?”

“I could go for an omelette,” Podrick chimed in quietly, and Theon resolved himself to eating some of the pop tarts Trystane had procured for himself earlier. He always liked the strawberry ones. Domeric slinked into the kitchen when the shouting died down, voicing affirmation that he wanted one as well. Lancel was marching back up to the bedrooms and Griff was speaking heatedly with Davos, gesticulating as the man in front of him squeezed the bridge of his nose with his index finger.

The faint sound of a door slamming came from upstairs, causing everyone to glance between themselves.

“You shouldn’t have interrupted them,” Colin grumbled as he reached for a bowl to pour himself some cereal. His coppery hair seemed to glint in the light—he was attractive, he noticed, remembering that he heard somewhere that he was an actor. “Better they hash it out now than three weeks later in a screaming match at one of the cocktail parties.”

“You really think _Lancel_’s lasting three weeks?” Rakharo chortled as if he hadn’t just started the newest bout of drama in the house. Theon liked him, he did, but he couldn’t help but eye him with confusion at the initiative he was taking. “What? Even Chataya knows he’s a lost cause. His days are numbered and that’s not a crime to point out. It’s just telling the truth.”

“None of us know what Sansa wants,” Asher turned to smirk at the lot of them as another door opened, signaling that Willas and Dickon were back from whatever producer huddle they were having earlier. He cracked an egg on the edge of the bowl. “Maybe the Septon thing does it for her. The religious thing’s hot when you look at it the right way.” He shrugged. “She strikes me as the type to like it. Stark in the streets, wolf in the sheets, right?”

“Someone asked for a juice box?” A girl with brown hair braided into a crown on her head placed a pack of them on the counter, her eyes glazed as she listened to something on the other end of her headset for a moment. She was dressed all in black like the other crewmembers were. “Last call for the juice boxes or the lighting crew’s getting ‘em.”

“I’ll take it, Megga.” Domeric bound forward with a timid smile, looking half-pained and half-grateful. He locked eyes with Theon briefly before averting them. “Thank you.”

No direct response came from the girl as she flounced away, shouting Davos’ name along with a proclamation that someone named Stannis would be visiting set soon. How did anyone remember people’s names around here? He was having trouble keeping up with the other guys competing and yet, half of them already knew the whole crew on a first name basis.

The sound of ice getting tipped over caused Theon to flinch, wondering in the back of his mind when he would finally get some peace and quiet. Maybe Lancel really did know what was up by leaving. He looked up to see Trystane reaching for a carton of juice to pour into the blender. Was he making a protein shake or something? “Smoothie?”

“Margarita,” Trystane retorted with a knowing smirk.

“It’s ten in the morning, mate,” Hugh pointed out hesitantly, eyeing the tequila that had been pulled out of the counter as if it would jump out and bite him. “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

From his spot on the couch, Willas peeked up from the crossword puzzle he had somehow acquired in his brief time away (probably courtesy of his producer) and pressed his lips together with annoyance as Trystane flashed a signature pearly smile at the lot of them.

Tension seemed to float through the air as Willas raised his brows and returned to his puzzle, though Theon couldn’t recall the two of them ever interacting before. Trystane merely shrugged. “Perfect time, if you ask me. Time difference and all of that, you know?”

“Dorne’s only an hour behind-” Colin’s voice was drowned out by the sound of the machine whirring to life.

* * *

It had been four days since they had heard anything note-worthy from the production staff.

Ros visited them on the second day, pulling Asher, Domeric, Theon, and Podrick just like Chataya had done a few days prior. There were four individual producers for the guys from what Theon could tell—Ros, Chataya, Jayde, and Taena— and each seemed to have a personal stake in making sure their contestants got far enough to make an impact. She was thirty-seven and didn’t spend any more time with them than was necessary. Aside from the basic pleasantries, she didn’t seem that interested in anything about them but winning.

She conducted ITMs with them once on how they were feeling about Sansa and the other guys and instructed them not to engage anyone else in drama—she called it the ‘kiss of death’ and instructed them not to do anything unless she specifically told them to.

She left as quickly as she came, with a storm in her expression and muttering something indiscernible into her headset.

Now, Theon was looking at the sky, his ears comfortably blocked off by the pool water he was floating in. The sky was a clear blue—so dramatically different from the cloudy grey he had grown used to seeing in the North, or from the angry greys and greens he recalled from his childhood on Pyke. It was just… empty, save for a few white clouds here and there.

It only took a few moments for his peace to come to an end.

He spluttered as soon as he was splashed in the face with water, struggling to regain balance on his feet to look for the assailant. Instead of the smirking kind of-friends he expected to find once he blinked the water out of his eyes, he found Domeric staring nervously elsewhere at the other end of the pool with Rakharo beside him, enraptured by the argument unfolding.

Trystane was standing in his swim trunks, his arms crossed over his chest, as Dickon argued with him heatedly. It took mere moments for Theon to make out what they were saying.

“So you’re accusing me of pretending to like Sansa because… what?” Trystane sneered. “I’m not worried enough about a _rumor_ about a spy? Seems like you might be projecting, Tarly.”

Dickon’s face seemed to heat considerably at the accusation. “You’re not even denying it.”

“I’m denying it right now-” Trystane started, his patience beginning to trickle away.

“Sansa deserves better than some fuckhead trying to get more followers on Instagram-”

“You don’t know me, and you don’t know what my-”

“-I don’t need to know your story to know that you’re _using_ her to-”

“-intentions are with her, and I’d suggest you focus on your _own_ connection instead of-”

“-boost your own popularity. I actually _want_ to be with her, and I care about-”

Theon’s brows were practically shooting towards the skies as he watched them argue with one another, getting far more into it than he would have liked to do on television himself.

Colin was lingering behind Damien the DP, his forehead creased with concern, and pretty much everyone in the house had gathered around the pool to see what the commotion was.

“You think I don’t care about her?” Trystane got into Dickon’s face as if he was ready to throw a punch and bizarrely, Theon found himself glancing at the woman holding the microphone as if she would intervene. It was television, though, so he guessed not.

“I _know_ you don’t care about her,” Dickon spat, shoving Trystane away from him with both hands to his chest. “So you can stop pretending to be anything other than a clout-chaser-”

“You know nothing about our relationship,” Trystane defended him with what would have seemed like a misplaced passion for a girl he barely knew if not for his knowledge about the extent to which they got to know one another during their one-on-one date. “Or why I’m here, for that matter. I’m not here for any other reason than because I want to be with Sansa.”

“I’d suggest you back off,” Dickon warned him, eyes blazing as he seemed to physically have to restrain himself from lunging at the other man. Theon could only watch in awe and slight horror as the DP closed in on them, a cluster of producers and crewmembers doing their damndest to capture the fight as dramatically as they possibly could. “Or else.”

The threat went unspoken between them.

Trystane simply raised both hands in the air as if to mockingly surrender to him.

He walked back a few steps before spinning back around, heading back into the house with an angry lurch to his step as if nothing had happened at all—the claims that a spy was in the house continued going unaddressed as the group of them fell into silence once more, unsure as to how to interact with each other after the first true display of drama in the house.

The low murmuring to his right indicated that the accusations hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Before much more could be said, Lancel was urged forward by Brella, an assistant with platinum blonde hair and a rather pretty face—she looked more like a contestant on this kind of show than someone who would work behind the scenes, but that was neither here nor there. He looked uncomfortable with the scrutiny but cleared his throat regardless, and Theon really had to wonder why he had even applied for a show like this in the first place.

“It’s from Sansa,” Lancel announced tepidly before opening the flaps of it carefully. “Theon. Let’s start our love off on the right note. Sansa. And there’s a heart right next to her name.”

Theon felt his stomach swoop once he realized everyone was watching him.

The realization that the rest of the house at least had an inkling that someone wasn’t here for the ‘right reasons’ was beginning to send him into a panic- if he didn’t react the right way to this, they would know it was him. He forced a wide grin and laughed good-naturedly as he waded through the water to surface from the pool and get ready for his date. “Cool.”

* * *

His requests to speak to Sansa before the date were all ignored. 

He was treated like every other contestant was, which proved to be irritating in that he didn’t bank on having his phone confiscated for his _entire_ time there. He just thought he would have to put it on for the guys, not live like them. Hopefully it would get easier to sneak some entertainment in once they were further along in filming, but it was beginning to drive him off the rails. It would give the game away if he was caught but… it was still maddening.

“Eat. We’ll be at location in less than ten minutes,” Ros instructed him as he itched at the hand-me-down blazer he had shrugged on before rushing to the limo. A divider was put up between them and the driver, and a grilled cheese sandwich in a small plastic container had been shoved into his hands as soon as he got in. “You won’t be able to for the next few hours. We can stop at a drive-thru for tacos if you’re still hungry after we wrap. Estimated time for it’s eleven at night, so I suggest you fill up. If you’re still hungry, there’s mac ‘n cheese bites in my trailer. Just ask me or the PAs on set, and they can sneak you some.”

He nodded in time with her words as he pried the container’s top open.

It smelled good, and it was warm in his hands. Better than he could have asked for, really.

“You know the drill. At least one kiss for the cameras. Try to do a few more if you can, it shouldn’t be that hard. If we need more for the reshoots, I’ll tell you.” Ros ran him through the motions, her ponytail whipping against her cheek as the car veered to the side. She shot the driver an annoyed look through the partition before continuing. “It’s a concert date so there will be people filming inside and outside the venue. Don’t give away why you’re here.”

She jabbed a finger at him as he swallowed his dinner down.

“Be romantic. Touch her any way you can; a hand at the waist, around the shoulder, a kiss on the head. Just don’t put me to sleep, here. We’ve got to _believe_ your chemistry, Greyjoy, got it? If you look bad out there, I look bad, and I can’t afford to have my ass on the line.” Ros tapped her pen against her lips once before she finished her train of thought. “We’re going to pull you throughout for ITMs and you’re going to run me through your shtick. They’re going to reshoot the dancing at least twice if they don’t get it the first time –you’re going to be near the singer in the pit– and you’re not allowed to chew anything. It’ll fuck with the audio. Need any mouthwash, I’ve got a bottle on me. You’ve got to be cute. Make the audience root for you with her. Being a clown isn’t going to be enough to win them over, so you’ve got to try.”

“What are we starting with?” He interrupted her, already overwhelmed by the information piled onto him. The car was beginning to slow somewhat, to which he could feel the energy in his body begin to jumble around inside of him. Or was that vomit? “With scenes, I mean.”

Ros frowned as she peeked outside of the window before refocusing back on him. “Our ETA is in five minutes. We’re going to start with a running hug shot, then one outside the concert hall. Rinse and repeat for however long we need it. After that, it’s just b-roll of the date to go over the ITMs. Handholding, laughing, that shit.” She paused. “You can pick her up, right?”

He recalled every time he had gotten her home when she was at her sloppiest (and whenever she used to return the favor when he was nineteen and spent every hangover crashing at Robb’s place) and tried not to look affronted at the question. “Of course I can pick her up.”

She nodded. “Good. You’re going to regret that.” 

* * *

Ros wasn’t kidding.

He had caught Sansa mid-air so many times that his arms were beginning to strain.

This time, _take fifty-seven-_ his melodramatic mind couldn’t help but gamble, she lurched herself at him with the precision of someone who had been forced to do this same hug over and over again. Her legs wrapped instantly around his hips, his hands automatically locking underneath her bottom to support her better as her arms looped around his neck. He held her tighter to him as she buried her face into his neck for the umpteenth time that evening.

This was excruciating. How was anyone supposed to connect with someone romantically when these kinds of shots were so… mechanical? It all just felt staged, even as someone who had known her for years. He couldn’t imagine what this must have been like with a stranger.

“Cut!” Elissa called out, to which his arms loosened around her and her feet met the ground.

Almost instantly, Sansa broke away from him to face Brienne who was already standing at the ready with the remainder of a tuna sub sandwich that Sansa had clearly been looking forward to for the entirety of the last few takes they had redone until it was just right.

She was crowded by her makeup team almost instantly, her head producer explaining something to her with a slight smile on her face—as if Sansa’s professed fondness for her truly was mutual. A woman with dark hair swept a brush over Sansa’s cheek as she listened raptly to what Brienne had to say; and for a moment, he felt himself smiling as well.

A small hand clamped around his wrist and led him off to the side in his distracted haze.

He barely had a moment to register that he was being surrounded by two cameras with a microphone in his face before Ros took a seat across from him on a metal pull-out chair.

“Tell me about your home life, Theon.” She started carefully. “What do you do?”

He felt embarrassment creep up within him at the thought of what he did for work, recalling that some of the other guys here had jobs like ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘stockbroker’ and ‘architect’—meanwhile, he was just… “I’m a bartender. I come from the Iron Islands, and-”

“Say mixologist,” Ros interrupted him sweetly, her gaze a piercing contradiction to her tone. He nearly shrunk back at the sight of it. “It sounds more professional. More… desirable.”

“I’m a mixologist, and I’m from the Iron Islands. Uh, I’ve got a sister, Yara, and she owns the bar I work at. I’m turning thirty at the end of this September, and I-”

“I don’t need your life story,” Ros snapped at him. There was something almost exhausted in her demeanor as she leaned forward, the bags under her eyes illuminated by the lighting rig nearby. “Tell me about your tragedies. Addiction, death, trauma. Give me _something_ here.”

“What?” Theon furrowed his brows, not quite understanding why they’d want to talk about his trauma right before a date. Wasn’t this the kind of thing they saved for later down the line? And for real contestants at that? “I’m good. Nothing really tragic here.” He could feel his neck beginning to heat up underneath the collared shirt he had worn out on the date. “I’ve got my mum and my sister. They’re the most important people in my life. They live on Har-”

Ros clicked her tongue as if gauging his reluctance to speak as a challenge to get him to open up. “You have a history of substance abuse. It began after your brothers passed, didn’t it?”

He paused, blinking with surprise at how callously she had phrased that. Was she trying to get a reaction out of him for the cameras? “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“I need _something_ from you, Theon.” Ros leveled with him as if they were equals and not a paid manipulator and manipulatee. “I’ve got your file on record. I already know about it. You won’t have to worry about judgment. It’s standard for us. Tame, even. I’ve seen worse.”

“Good for you,” he reaffirmed. “I’m still not talking about that with you.”

She looked unimpressed but persevered, her paycheck likely a pretty helpful inspiration to her. “She helped you with it, didn’t she?” She narrowed her eyes as if trying to see into his soul, to which Theon shifted uncomfortably under the weight of her stare. “Is that what brought you closer? Was it a coincidence that you both saw the same therapist or was-”

“I’ve been healthy for years,” Theon retorted defensively, not wanting any more of a trip down memory lane than the one she was subjecting him to. He fidgeted with the sleeve of his blazer. “Sansa was always supportive. Her brother’s my best friend and I was his roommate when we were in college. Of course we were close. It’s not- It doesn’t have to be about some _tragedy_ or something, okay? I came on this show because she needed me to do her a favor.”

“You specifically?” Ros countered as if she hadn’t heard the rest of his statement. Her pen seemed to twirl between her fingers as she leaned closer into him as if she somehow thought proximity could pry nonexistent secrets out of him. “Why do you think she asked you?”

Theon furrowed his brows, a little confused about where the line of questioning was headed.

She hadn’t asked him specifically. He had volunteered after she had all but given up.

“I care about her. I want her to find her uh…” he tried to think about how Jeyne would phrase it if she was here. “-her person. It’s as simple as that. It’s why she’s here, right?”

“So, she’s like a sister to you?” Ros questioned and raised her brows as soon as Theon inadvertently made a face at the comparison. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about her like she was family but she just- she wasn’t a _sister_ to him. It seemed icky, probably because he was going to have to make out with her in less than an hour. “She _isn’t_ like a sister to you?”

She was trying to make it look like he was in love with her.

Irritation bubbled up within him as he gave the camera a deadpan. “I already have a sister.”

It looked like she wanted to say something else before she was frowning.

“Give me a few more minutes. I’m getting somewhere and- I don’t care if Stannis wants to see- Melisandre, come on. I’ve got a job to do and I’m so close-” she seemed to bite her tongue and squared Theon with a look as if to tell him they weren’t finished having this conversation. She was still listening to whoever was on the other end of her headset, but the crew filming him began packing up to relocate. “Whatever. Okay. Places in five minutes.”

She looked a little put out but didn’t move to stop the cameramen and the guy on sound (was this one Tommy? Or Duncan?) from getting into a cluster to listen to the DP who had jogged over to tell them where to position themselves. It fascinated Theon—he hadn’t realized so many people contributed to making a show like this come together.

He kind of just assumed it was all Oberyn Martell. With the exception of rose ceremonies though, he hadn’t really seen him at all.

“Are you going to take those quotes out of context?” Theon asked suddenly, recalling how Bran had explained ‘frankenbites’ to Jeyne once when they were arguing about whether Myrcella on Harry’s season really was a ‘mega bitch’ or not. The thought of editors splicing together audio of him saying things that he hadn’t really said made him anxious. “Ros?”

She exhaled through her nose in a poor imitation of a laugh. “I don’t fucking know. Editors put this shit together in post in a couple of months.” She sighed as she stood up and stretched her arms above her head, her joints cracking as her face mellowed out. “My job is to get you to talk. They decide what you’re going to say and how you’re gonna look, not me.”

“That’s fucked up,” he stated aimlessly as he turned to watch Sansa listening carefully to whatever Elissa was telling her to do. By the way she was gesticulating, he couldn’t tell.

“It’s television,” Ros retorted, extending a hand to help him up. He stared at it for a few moments before taking it, Trystane’s advice buzzing in his head. “Of course it’s fucked up.”

A ringing sound came from the trailers parked around the concert hall and Theon shoved his hands into his pockets as the pair of them strolled forward. Ros reached for a pack of cigarettes in her pocket, fumbling to open it before popping one slightly crushed cig in her mouth. He looked away as she lit it, his eyes catching on the flashing lights around them.

“Someone told Colin that there’s a mole in the house,” he tried not to sound too accusatory as they walked towards the site they were going to be filming at. He tried to push down his anger about the plan unraveling so soon into the process. “Started a couple of fights already.”

Ros exhaled deeply. “Jayde told him before we could stop her. Didn’t say who it was at least, and the boss likes the drama.” At Theon’s incredulous grunt, she continued to explain. “She knows he’s going home soon, wanted to give him his chance at making an impression. He’s her guy. If it was someone on my team, I would’ve done the same. We all would have.”

“Why did you pick me?” Theon wondered. It seemed pointless to bet on someone who definitely wouldn’t win, but he couldn’t really make sense of anything about her.

“I didn’t,” Ros chuckled, staring ahead of her at the concert hall as she took another drag of her cigarette. It was decorated in fairy lights, a faint name Theon had never heard of flashing on the banner above it. This was going to suck. “Chin up, Greyjoy. Remember to smile.”

* * *

They were readjusted countless times by the on-site producer, from her leaning her head on his shoulder, to being tucked into his side, to awkwardly holding hands as they walked the same path towards the venue time and time again. Occasionally, they would make eye contact, only to jump out of their skin every time they were screamed at to _HOLD_.

The last take ended up being one where she leaned up against him as they walked like they were in some sort of a romantic comedy or a Hallmark movie, with Sansa pretending to laugh at a joke he hadn’t told as the cameras followed them. It was unbelievably fake.

“_So_ genuine and real,” Theon mocked the show under his breath, which got him a sharp elbow in the ribs by Sansa as they flashed too-wide smiles at one another mid-stride. “What? Couldn’t we at least have a conversation? This shit’s jarring, Sansa. None of it’s real.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” Sansa wrenched away from him to spin back on her feet, reaching over with both hands to grasp at his. He let her tug him along, a fond smile replacing the forced one on his face. “It’s b-roll. Look cute for the cameras and they’ll let us go.”

She paused long enough for him to collide into her, a tactical maneuver if he had ever seen one, where she forced them into an embrace right in front of the building.

He wrapped his arms around her in turn, thinking about the dinosaur-shaped frozen chicken nuggets he had spotted in the house’s freezer right before he had left.

If the other guys ate them, this would be like not getting a boat date all over again. It wouldn’t be so bad to have to be here for a few hours longer. It couldn’t last all night.

“Got it,” Elissa shouted from behind one of the follow-spots, a walkie talkie pressed to her lips as she eyed Theon and Sansa like they were merely dolls to organize into positions rather than real people. “I’m going to need you two to enter the venue. We’re only doing this once so do exactly what you’re doing and don’t pull any shit. Capiche? In five, four, three…”

Her counting had gone silent but by now Theon knew that was code for ‘be ready to do what you have to do’ so he reached for Sansa’s hand almost without thinking. She took it, flashing him a quick smile when he squeezed her hand with his own.

As soon as another bell rang, they both strode forward and attempted to emulate excitement at the name on the board. He paused at the next _hold_ that followed, resuming only when the cameras were practically brushing their backs to capture their entrance, unnecessarily close to them like they always were. He could feel her impatience begin to build with thinly veiled amusement, wondering how she handled doing this on every date.

It must have been exhausting. No wonder there were only two one-on-ones a week.

“Okay,” the blonde producer in charge of Sansa caught up to them at the doorway, placing a comforting hand on Sansa’s shoulder like they were old friends. She didn’t shrink away from the touch nor did she react, to Theon’s mild surprise. “We’ll do your entrance once. Ignore the cameras. You can wave at the people if you want, but don’t talk to any of them and don’t touch any of them. Just walk straight; you have a section partitioned off for both of you.”

But it didn’t end there.

“Stop there and don’t do anything until the musician finishes warm-ups,” she warned them sternly, reminding Theon of every teacher who had ever scolded him in primary school. “This is his opening number. We’re behind schedule so you can’t stick around for the rest of the show, but we can knock out the back half of the date as soon as we’re done here. Clear?”

“Clear,” Sansa made a saluting gesture at her, to which the other woman merely smiled.

“Theon?” The producer asked, genuinely seeming concerned for his comprehension.

“Yeah, got it,” he affirmed, feeling himself tense somewhat at the sound of rambunctious applause from inside the venue. The crowd definitely knew they were here. That little shit, Bran, would absolutely see this on one of his spoiler websites. Yara wouldn’t let him hear the end of this, he could already tell, and Dany would roast his outfit without mercy. Gods, he was thirty and he was on a dating show that he wasn’t even interested in competing in.

The woman nodded curtly and went back to doing… whatever it was that producing entailed.

Sansa’s hand was warm around his, tugging him forward with a smile plastered on her face.

She was anxious, he could tell, but she had always handled her anxiety better than he did. Where he would withdraw into himself and lash out, she would mold the situation and acclimate to it. She looked like she belonged here, even as she tossed her head back and shot him a smile, her face half illuminated by the fairy lights strung all up over walls of the hall.

He returned her smile in full, his head swimming as the flash on a few dozen phones went off, likely documenting one of the few public dates that she would have on her season. It was only fitting that they would give it to him, considering he wasn’t even a real contender.

Once they reached the podium in question, Sansa took care to watch her step. She was wearing a black long-sleeved dress, but the material felt a little like a sweater underneath his fingertips. It was all overwhelming. The cameras and the crew were one thing, but it was another for at least a hundred screaming girls to watch their every move.

Theon squeezed his eyes shut and willed his confidence to just come back to him already, regardless of the shouting and the cameras and the concert. It was just difficult to focus.

He inhaled sharply as soon as she crowded his space, his eyes snapping open confusedly at her proximity to him. She was touching him. He tried not to bristle at the contact of her hand at the back of his neck, her thumb rubbing along the nape of it comfortingly. It wasn’t that her touch made him _uncomfortable_ but rather that he wasn’t used to having her so… close.

At least not since they were practically kids.

Theon tried to swallow down the lump in his throat as the smell of her perfume assaulted his senses. It was like vanilla and almonds and strawberries, and he felt the immediate urge to pull away. It was horrifyingly reminiscent of a blend between his first middle school slow dance with Bessa and every group-hug Theon had reluctantly participated in with the Starks.

She had jumped into his arms upwards of thirty times today alone but that was somehow different to this. His hands eventually came up to rest on her hips, figuring that it would look strange if he wasn’t touching her in some capacity. From the sound of things, the musician was still doing sound tests into the microphone, and hundreds of eyes were still burning into his skull. He felt caged in, though her presence did manage to soothe him a little bit.

“Hey,” she murmured, her thumb curling through a strand of his hair infuriatingly. He wasn’t sure why this was making him so uneasy but it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on anything here. Gods, why couldn’t he just have gotten a boat date instead? “Don’t think about them. It’s just you and me. Pretend it’s just us at… prom or something.”

He remembered her prom. It was almost ten years ago now, but that memory stuck out more to him than most around that time. Jon and Robb had driven two hours to beat up some smug-looking blond kid for shouting at Sansa in the middle of the dancefloor. Theon remembered reeking of whiskey and nursing a bloody fist as a testament to his poor impulse control. It ended in him getting subjected to an extensive lecture (and a grueling phone call to his own mother) from Catelyn because of it. Gods, he had been such a mess back then.

His own prom hadn’t been much better. He had left it about halfway through to hook up with Kyra in the back of his shitty car only to immediately get caught by one of the chaperones. That had prompted another phone call to his mum. It was just as well that Balon had never really cared much about what Theon did, though he always used to feel a spike of guilt whenever his mother looked at him with exhausted eyes, not disappointed but just… tired.

It wasn’t until after the divorce that he had even really seen his mother smile.

He had a feeling that an anecdote about a failed marriage wouldn’t be much of a comfort to Sansa, so he didn’t mention it. Instead, he leaned his forehead against hers, drawing in another calming breath to prevent himself from acknowledging any of the curious eyes staring at the pair of them. The contact provided an oddly stabilizing distraction for him. “Do you think he’ll ever start playing or are we just gonna do this for two hours?”

Sansa’s smile stretched out into a grin and before she could say anything, the musician was thanking everyone for their patience and welcoming them to the venue.

It was all generic, but the crowd didn’t seem to care. Theon barely paid attention to any of it until he seemed to be wrapping up the introductory speech he was giving the spectators. “And this one’s a real special one to me. It’s called, uh, _In This Shirt_.”

He had been dreading this date since he read the note. He recalled the season the Starks watched when Sansa was on the show and how Harry had slow-danced with Missandei to a folksy song about being ‘made for you’ as they swayed and made out; it seemed like the most pointless type of date. And really, how was it any different to his college years when he would make out with girls at bars while shitty music played over the jukebox?

Gods, they were going to have to make out. In front of people. And cameras.

She scrunched her nose up as the soft strumming of a guitar seemed to overtake the hall, encouraging him to step to the side so that they could sway comfortably in place. It was just a song. Three to five minutes and this would all probably be over.

_“I am lost in a rainbow,  
Now our rainbow is gone,  
Overcast by your shadow,  
As our worlds move on…” _

There was a strange quality to the song. It wasn’t folksy nor was it particularly seductive. It was pretty, in a way, and he couldn’t help but tighten his hands around her hips, the action causing her inadvertently to take a step closer to him. Something unidentifiable swelled up within him as her hand continued carding through the hair at the back of his hair, massaging it as if it was a force of habit. He tried to avert his eyes, but they kept returning to hers.

He could see every pore on her face and every flutter of her eyelashes (they still looked good, though it only made sense that they did considering her makeup artists had been on this date with her longer than he was) and he had no choice but to notice things he had never really noticed before. Her hair cascaded over one shoulder, shimmering like every sunset he had begged his mother to watch with him back at the beaches on Harlaw as a child.

Her lips were parted, the ends teasing the hint of a smile, and her hair was curled at the ends rather than straightened. There was something dancing in her eyes—possibly a reflection of the fairy lights, or intrigue, or confusion, or amusement, or nervousness, or even mirth as if to ask ‘how did we get into this mess, huh?’ He tried to decipher the meaning inside of them as the stare prolonged itself, an uncomfortable heat tugging at his chest.

“_In this shirt, I can be you,  
To be near you for a while.”_  
  
“What are you thinking about?” He heard himself asking her, his voice rougher than he intended but less shaky than he anticipated. The realization that he was getting nervous around _Sansa_ hadn’t quite set in yet, but goosebumps seemed to line every expanse of skin that she touched with her own. She was taller than him now, taller than she used to be in his memory. She was twenty-six and still managed to exist in his memory as… _not_ twenty-six.

And suddenly, that was changing as well.

She cocked her head the slightest bit as if she hadn’t heard him. “I don’t know.”

He couldn’t make any sense of what the inflection in her voice meant, only that her eyes flickered down from his eyes to his lips before it was like it hadn’t even happened at all.  
  
_“In this shirt, I can be you,  
To be near you for a while.”_

“I can feel everyone looking at us,” he stepped from side to side, minding not to step on her feet. It was insufferable, the way that everyone was watching (and probably filming) their every move to analyze and pick apart later. He had never felt so scrutinized in years; not since his last return to Pyke and his blowout fight with his father. “No pressure or anything.”

A teasing smile weaseled its way onto Sansa’s lips. “You sound nervous.”

“Maybe I am,” he countered weakly, now sounding just as antsy as he felt.

She looked at him in a way not dissimilar to how Ros looked at him earlier in the night. It was an all-knowing gaze, one that seemed to see right through him and into thoughts that he hadn’t even made sense of yet. It was unnerving to be looked at like that. “Relax.”

“Easier said than done, Sansa,” he murmured into her eye as they turned in place, trying and failing not to look out at the expectant audience near them. The cameras followed their every move, and he tried desperately not to lock eyes with Ros or Brienne or the handful of other crew members who were watching the interaction with a professional eye. “Gods.”

She didn’t respond this time and merely dipped her head forward to rest it in the crook between his neck and shoulder. His body shifted closer to hers of its own volition, a bodily reaction to having her so close to him and embracing him. He caught sight of the keyboard at the front of the stage and of someone waiting in the wings with a violin gripped in her hands.

The serenade was oddly impersonal and personal at once, as if it was just for them.

_“Of you and me ever changing  
Moving on now, moving fast,”_

The air seemed to shift as she lifted her head the slightest bit, her eyes swimming with something (and Gods, he just wanted a glimpse into her head to see if she was feeling this too because _this_ was new) as they seemed to gravitate towards Theon’s eyes, as if there was some magnetic pull drawing them together. They were beautiful. She was beautiful.

But hadn’t he always known that?

It was like every inch of her face his eyes took in left him wanting more and more until she had nothing left to give; her cheekbones were sharp, and her eyes were the most expressive he had ever seen them, her brows drawn together as if she was trying to work something out herself, her lips were arched perfectly, her nose was centered exactly right, and even in the dim lighting of the concert hall, he could see the faint blush across her cheeks.

It was like she wasn’t Sansa anymore, but she was _Sansa_.

Someone entirely new and yet, someone so familiar to him that every move she made seemed ingrained into his memory. She was the same person she had always been but it was like there had been some obstacle blocking him from seeing every part of her that he saw now.  
  
_“And this touch must be wanted,  
Must become through your ask.”_

As the violin came into play and the music began to build, he remembered what they were meant to do. Not just by the producers, he thought wildly, but perhaps by some higher power.

Every useless braincell in his head seemed to fizzle out as he looked at her.

“Do you wanna make out?” He breathed as if they were college freshmen having their first sexually-charged, awkward interaction at a party, and not friends indulging in a fake charade that would be aired on television before long. She blinked up at him like she was taken aback by the question—wasn’t she told that they would have to do this?

He was sure she had mentioned it to him when she pitched the idea to the family. Was it the way he asked? Did she want to kiss him? Did she want him to ask differently? His mind raced with all the possibilities, his heart and ego feeling particularly vulnerable as she stared at him. What if she said no? Had he somehow been interpreting the ‘kiss’ part incorrectly?

Before he could backtrack, her hand was inching from the nape of his neck to the side of his jaw, tracing the edges of it absentmindedly. She licked her lips once and his eyes were immediately drawn to the action. Something seemed to spark between their eyes for the split second before she was leaning forward, her eyes sliding shut in anticipation of a kiss.

_“But I needed to tell you,  
That I love you - it never ends.”_

It was a press of the lips. Something they had both done a thousand times before. It wasn’t as careful as it should have been and there were hundreds of eyes on them, but it caught like fire. They weren’t just lab rats making out for a camera or a crowd; they were _together_.

He released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as she moved to deepen the kiss, leaning into him like she hadn’t anticipated the sudden… _click_, of it all either.

The song continued, merely background music as he tilted his head to the side, losing himself in her. Her hand slid back from his jaw into his hair as if to tug him closer in any way she could, and his heart was almost fit to burst, stuttering in a tempo of its own apart from the music. If she kept this up, she would probably be in the hospital before the end of the night.

There was something raw in the kiss, a quality that kept him from doing anything that might prematurely end it—and at this point, any ending at all would feel premature.

As if reading his mind, she moved her lips against his, sighing softly against his mouth as the world melted away completely. It was everything he had never realized he wanted.

_“I am lost,”_

She was addictive even with her lip gloss smeared all over his lower face, and the kiss seemed to last years as the same phrase was uttered over and over again by the singer in question. Her fingers continued threading through his hair rhythmically and she kissed him like it was the only thing she knew how to do. They were entangled in each other, lost in the moment for what could have been hours as his hands roved over her back, needing her closer.

It felt like eons had passed before a raucous cheering pulled him out of the bubble they had created for themselves. He leaned back enough to make out his surroundings once more, dumbstruck at the events of the last song, and his fingers seemed to scorch at her lower back.

Their eyes locked and it was like his entire world had shifted on its axis.

He wanted to pull her back to him, to pepper her lips with adoring kisses, to hold her close and feel her need him as much as he needed her—he wanted _her_ and the realization wasn’t nearly as shocking as he would have expected it to be. It felt natural. Like it had been beneath the surface for years, only to be discovered for what it was, what it always had been, now.

He wanted to steal one of this stupid network’s private jets and fly her away to wherever she would want to go, wherever would make her happy, wherever would make her smile. They could leave this stupid show behind, contracts be damned, and get away from all of it.

Theon wanted everything with her. He wanted Sansa.

Before he could will words to come out of his mouth, a hand was tugging on Sansa’s elbow to wrench her to the side, and the dark-haired makeup artist from earlier was offering her a to-go cup of coffee as if it was just another day. She took it gratefully, her eyes flitting back to him briefly before she parted her lips as if to speak and—

“You’ve got an ITM in two minutes,” Jacelyn stepped between them, her bun of black hair held together with a green pencil. “They need you outside, stat. Then you can take a fifteen.”

Before he could tell her to fuck off, Sansa was already gone, swept away to get briefed by someone else about whatever important Bachelorette things she had to do. And it was like it hadn’t happened at all. If he hadn’t been wearing the majority of her lipstick on his face, he would have questioned whether any of it had happened at all or it had just been a daydream.

He stumbled out of the double doors past the crowd, a whoosh of cold air seeming to hit him as soon as he made contact with the outside world again. His body didn’t feel warm anymore; it felt clammy and riddled with nerves that he would have preferred to ignore entirely. He had just made out with Sansa. He was into Sansa. What was he _thinking_?

“Congrats,” Ros called out from where she had already gathered her camera crew from earlier. “No need for a second take. There’s an open bar and I’m gonna need you in the car by 9:30 so you can make the dinner part of the date. For now, just stick to small talk. Pets, family vacations, hopes and dreams. Just keep it basic. Can you do that for me?”

All Theon had to do was nod dumbly before she was continuing.

“Okay, back to the good stuff.” Ros raised a sculpted brow at him as Duncan on sound balanced a Tupperware container of chili on his knee while dangling a mic over Theon’s head. He absentmindedly wondered what would happen if it were to fall on his head. It couldn’t be soft, but it didn’t look that hard either. “That kiss looked pretty intense back there.”

“Uh…” Theon struggled to string together a satisfactory response to that. “Yeah.”

“How long have you had feelings for her?” Ros got straight to the point, that was for sure.

Theon squirmed under the weight of the cameras, acutely aware that anything too incriminating he said here would definitely be aired on television. Sansa would hear it for herself if he just came out and admitted it, right? Nothing sounded less appealing than divulging his newfound feelings to Ros for the sake of ratings. “It was a good kiss, that’s all.”

“And you’ve never kissed her before?” She pressed him, to which he rolled his eyes.

“No, I’ve never kissed her before,” Theon sighed defeatedly. “That was the first time.”

“And you grew up together, isn’t that right?” She continued as if on her way to uncovering the story of a lifetime. What was the point of this? “Since you were children.”

“We met in secondary school,” he responded curtly before correcting himself slightly, figuring without words that Ros probably wanted the story of how they met on record. “I was in secondary school. She was still in primary when we met—she was nine, I’m pretty sure. I’m best mates with her brother, Robb, but we didn’t get on for the longest time.”

“What changed?” Ros asked, smiling like a nosy grandmother to goad him into telling her more. “Between you two that ended with you getting so close?”

He shrugged. “She grew up. I grew up. Simple as that.”

“You have chemistry,” Ros mused, making a motion with her fingers to indicate that Theon should look at something behind him. “I don’t think she would be opposed to it if you…”

Theon tuned Ros out as soon as she gestured to where Sansa had also come outside, shrugging on a bomber jacket despite the warm weather. She was beautiful. Ros was probably toying with him by even entertaining the possibility of them working out, but his stomach still gave a nervous lurch at the prospect of speaking with her again after their kiss.

He stared at her for longer than was probably appropriate to do on camera, but as she laughed along with the DP’s joke in her small crowd of crew members, he couldn’t see the annoying kid from their childhood who tattled to Catelyn on him for tossing the jar of raisins down the garbage disposal; the one who begged him to buy her and her irritating little friends alcohol until he caved and just went ahead and got it for them; the one who made mac n’ cheese at two in the morning at Robb’s place without cause or reason, and put hot sauce on her eggs.

That line of thought was more dangerous than he gave it credit for.

Unbidden, he imagined himself pressing her against a wall and kissing her until their lips were too swollen to keep going, and of wrapping his arms around her from behind as she poured Tabasco sauce into a pan of sautéed vegetables and scrambled eggs, of kissing her sweetly on the beach, and there was no going back from that point onward.

He saw her, really saw her, and it was like every repressed urge he had ever had over the past few years came rushing back to him at once.

And he wanted to connect with her the way she was hoping to connect with one of the other guys here—that realization was an impactful enough blow that it nearly knocked the wind out of him entirely. He didn’t want her to do any of that stuff with anyone but him.

“I-” he started, fumbling for the wires strapped to his chest. “I need some air.”

Before Ros could attempt to stop him, he was ripping half of his mic pack off and staggering backward, wanting nothing more than to get away from it all. He just barely discerned Sansa’s eyes on him again, her expression contorted with concern as she watched him lean up against the brick wall of the concert hall like he was about to pass out any second.

* * *

Sansa shivered in her spot as she waited for the final instructions to be given to her on the dinner date portion of the one-on-one. There had been an oddly tense atmosphere in the air—much more than the actual date itself had been. She attributed that to the amount of time it had taken them to get here at all.

Gods, it had been _hours_ and her stomach seemed to rumble every few minutes.

If it weren’t Theon here with here, she probably would have died of embarrassment.

Theon had been relatively quiet since they had gotten to the table, mostly just engaging her in stunted conversation about their home lives in a blatant omission that they practically knew everything about their upbringings anyways. Occasionally, he surprised her (particularly with the story about how his mother had been one of the first women to swim across the Narrow Sea) but for the most part, the evening had just been full of the same small talk she had grown to resent about this show. Where was the real stuff? With Harry, she admittedly hadn’t opened up to him about much, but there was only so much she was willing to divulge on TV.

She wondered what the guys in the house were doing about now. Jeyne on the makeup crew told her that she would sneak Willas a board game or two on Sansa’s behalf.

Were they fighting much? The way Theon had spoken about the house always made it seem like a battlefield over a shared living space. In many ways, it wasn’t all that different from Sansa’s stay there when all the girls were accusing each other of being there for the ‘wrong reasons’, though she hoped some camaraderie would develop among the boys as it had for her season of girls. They were probably asleep right now if the time was any indication.

Sansa eyed Theon thoughtfully as he picked at the salad neither of them were allowed to eat, the pair of them waiting for the dreaded pause to end so that they could know whether to get back to talking or kiss again or refilm whatever it was they needed to film.

Instead, Brienne was arguing heatedly with a balding man who was motioning to their surroundings on the candlelit gazebo like he wanted something changed before they proceeded. He seemed important, though she couldn’t say she had ever really seen him around before. He was probably some higher-up with the network or something.

Theon was a good kisser.

Not that that surprised her much. She knew he got around when he was younger considering he never shut up about it until he was well into his early 20s. In spite of the knowing look Shae gave her as soon as she set to reapplying her lip gloss, there couldn’t be anything between aside from attraction. It was a great kiss—easy to get swept away in (and she had admittedly been curious about it for a while) but he was her friend at the end of the day. She knew how he was in relationships and she knew what he wanted; thinking about him as anything other than what she knew was too dangerous for her to even entertain for herself.

Purely physical relationships were a far cry from what she was looking for, no matter how tempting it was to just want to pursue the connections with chemistry to them.

She wanted something more than that, and the prospect of getting invested in someone she truly cared about like _that_ just to get her heart broken later along the line… it was inconceivable. Besides, Sims 3 had taught her that just being a good kisser was no signifier about emotional compatibility. Even considering Theon in that light was out of the question.

Did he feel weird about it?

He had gone the extra mile to make it look real, but she wondered if the fact that he had been filmed kissing _her_ had weirded him out somewhat. The guilt set in as she kept looking at him, noting his carefully averted eyes and stiff posture, wondering if she had pushed him too far by asking him to play along with his charade. It was enough of a favor for him to have put his life on hold to come here at all without having to pretend to be in love with her.

“Okay,” a voice called out through a megaphone, gentler than Elissa’s but firmer than any of the other producers in charge. “Let’s see the rose-pinning again. Whenever you’re ready.”

Putting her game face on, Sansa relaxed her mouth into an easy smile, her nose wrinkling as Theon raised his eyes to meet hers. “This was really just… such a beautiful night, Theon. So,” she reached for the rose pin on the platter in front of them coyly, twirling it between her fingers as he watched her, his eyes following every move. “Will you accept this rose?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a distinctly odd tone accompanying each word. It sounded softer than how he usually spoke—warmer, too, and a touch uncomfortable. “Of course, Sansa.”

Without giving it any more thought while they were being filmed, she reached forward to pin the rose onto the lapel of his jacket, smiling triumphantly as she heard the magnets click into place. She could see his throat bob as he swallowed, his eyes guarded yet inquisitive.

She didn’t think she would ever see _Theon_ so pensive in her life, but here he was.

For a split second, she considered kissing him again.

She wasn’t sure where the urge had come from nor did she try to break it down as anything beyond biological chemistry but it was there all the same. The kiss had been fun, and she caught herself thinking about how soft his lips were more than once over the course of the dinner. Then again, there was a fine line between accepting help and using someone, and she honestly couldn’t tell what his boundaries were anymore or where they stood.

Kissing was intimate by itself, she knew, and subjecting him to doing it as a public spectacle might have pushed him out of his comfort zone. She had to be considerate of his feelings, too, and the odd urge to kiss him would only serve to make things awkward between them.

Instead, she leaned forward to hug him.

After a moment of hesitation, his arms wrapped around her to return the embrace.

* * *

Some of the guys were still awake when he made his grand return, as evidenced by the lights that were still on in the mansion and the multitude of cameras and crew members gathered outside of his car door when he pulled up. It wasn’t a big deal that he got a rose, he knew.

Unless someone really fucked up on a date, they usually got one at the end of a one-on-one.

As anticipated, there were a fair number of hoots and hollers as soon as he entered the mansion brandishing a rose on his blazer. Willas and Podrick had gone to bed but everyone else had stayed up to see how Theon fared on his concert date. He answered the typical questions of whether they kissed and if he thought they had a connection with tepid affirmatives until he felt his eyes begin to droop where he had settled on the couch.

“You should get some shut-eye,” Domeric advised him gently, a glass of champagne held tightly in his hand. “I heard the wake-up call’s 7 A.M. tomorrow. There’s a group date.”

Theon felt his face fall almost instantly, a little devastated at the concept of waking up that early. “You think they’ll wake me up even though I’m not on it?”

The paralegal sighed. “They want reaction shots. They didn’t let Willas or Trystane sleep last week either. They played hangman while we were on the group date.”

There wasn’t any use prolonging the inevitable, especially directly after an emotional breakdown like the one he had endured earlier that day. Theon trudged upstairs with a halfhearted ‘goodnight’ thrown at the other guys, dreading the days to come.

* * *

“You’re cheating,” Theon grumbled as Podrick plopped another block of wood onto his side of the table, grinning all the while like he had won the lottery. He eyed the piece with resentment, shaking his head frantically. “You’ve got to be. That’s fucking impossible.”

The tower they had constructed in their game of Jenga was practically teetering on collapsing on itself. They had both been awake for three hours, instructed to entertain themselves with cameramen as supervisors while Sansa went on a group date with the rest of the guys to an aquarium. It had been miserable, though he had to admit that the company could have been worse. Podrick wasn’t particularly interesting but he had an optimistic energy about him.

“Don’t hate the player,” Podrick clicked his tongue as he leaned back. “Hate the game.”

Theon squared the other man with a withering glare before inspecting the gaps in the tower of blocks, trying to figure out some (or any) point of weakness where he could remove a block without causing the whole thing to topple over. Nothing on the right side.

He eyed the side closest to Podrick with thinly veiled suspicion, half expecting to discover some secret tip as to how he was supposed to win a game of jenga against a twenty-five-year-old physical therapist. He stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he attempted to focus on the sturdier areas of the building. He could win if he put his mind to it.

Deciding to take a leap of faith, Theon reached forward and swiped a block towards the middle of the jenga tower. Immediately, it was like the tower decided to break apart at every corner to spite him. He could only watch in horror as the entire thing fell in on itself with not a single block standing upright by the time it had finished collapsing completely. “Fuck.”

“Hah,” Podrick slapped his knees with his palm and stood up to make his way towards the kitchen. “You’re making dinner, right? Since I won? I’m kind of in the mood for steak.”

* * *

“You’re planning on sending him home then?” Shae inquired as she partitioned Sansa’s hair off, bringing the flat iron to the frontal section. She gestured at the photograph of Hugh and the bright post-it note that read ‘landscape designer’ that Sansa had tossed into her room’s garbage bin after her group date three days prior. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, per se, just that she didn’t feel anything when she was with him. Oberyn had told her that she would have to eliminate two people at the upcoming rose ceremony, so it was just as well that she could plan on the people she was sure definitely _weren’t_ the love of her life. “A shame.”

“We didn’t really have much of a connection,” Sansa replied evenly, noting how her vocabulary was beginning to adjust to the general lingo of her environment. “You know?”

“Yes.” A small smile quirked at Shae’s lips as she ran the flat iron across a section of Sansa’s hair. “I do know. Do you know who you want to keep?”

She thought for a moment. It always seemed easier to pick the people she didn’t want over going into depth with her thoughts on the people that she did want to keep in the running.

“I like Asher,” she mused, appreciating what his sense of humor contributed to the house. He hadn’t gotten vulnerable with her yet, but it still only was the second week. “I like Rakharo too. And Dickon. Especially Dickon. I gave him the rose on the group date the other day.”

Dickon had been as attentive as ever during the group date, frequently stealing her for side conversations and buying a bouquet of tulips to gift her with when the main event of the date had been occurring. He was almost princely, no matter how some of the other men seemed to dislike him. Sometimes certain personalities just didn’t mesh together, that was all, but she wouldn’t place all of her eggs into one basket just yet; this wouldn’t be something based on her whims like it was for Harry. “Hey, Shae? How are you going to style my hair?”

“In a ponytail,” she responded immediately. “You’re going rock-climbing today. I’ll be on-call to fix anything that goes wrong with it. Why? Did you want it to be braided instead?”

“No, that’s fine.” Sansa frowned distractedly, her eyes immediately meeting the board in her suite. As if to confirm what she already knew to be a fact with the guy she was meant to take on this date, she scanned the note she had written a week prior while they had been chatting each other up at the cocktail party. It was right there. “Podrick’s afraid of heights.”

Shae paused before bringing the straightener back to her hair. “Interesting.”

* * *

He took it better than she expected he would.

“At least it isn’t skydiving,” he had smiled at her as he pulled his equipment on with a shrug, curious and inquisitive nearly every step of the way as they were shown how to scale the wall properly. She had nearly slipped at one point to which he steadied her with a hand to the back of her boot, surprisingly calm for someone who was drawing in deep breaths every five seconds to center himself. There was something touching about spending time with someone who was willing to set aside their fears simply to try something new for her.

He cared already, and she appreciated that.

Every smile lit up his entire face and she had to wonder how she didn’t notice how handsome he was prior to their one-on-one time. After they had reached the top and shared a celebratory hug before being assisted back down, she caught herself glancing his way more than once; he was getting briefed on something by Theon’s producer, Ros. She was the one who produced Margaery and Roslin during Harry’s season, always hanging in the shadows.

Podrick was cute _and_ fun.

As soon as Ros deposited an iced mocha into her hands, Sansa could practically feel the energy coursing through her veins. Her makeup artist had gone off somewhere with the producer and for once, no cameras were tailing her every move. There were a few scattered around the studio, but none seemed to be manned or pointed at her, especially with Damian the DP lecturing assistants on the proper material to bring to a longer day-shoot. Everyone was packing up to get to the dinner portion of the date in a few hours anyhow.

“I had fun today,” a voice came out of nowhere, soft despite its suddenness. “A lot of it.”

She looked up from where she had been inhaling her coffee with the vigor of a sleep-deprived academic and offered Podrick a somewhat shy smile, suddenly feeling her heart begin to pick up in pace. He was surprisingly thoughtful for someone who had signed up to come on a dating show. “Me too, Podrick.”

“Thanks for, uh, choosing me,” he shifted his weight between both legs. “I’ve been hoping for some time alone with you and I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the chance.”

There was an endearing quality to how formal he was, especially in that the tips of his ears were reddening the longer Sansa stared at him without responding. Without giving her any time to doubt herself, she reached forward to take his hand gingerly. It was warm and secure, bigger than hers but not so much that he couldn’t run her thumb across his knuckles.

“Thank _you_ for giving this a chance,” she could feel her heart begin to twist around in her chest as he stared at her with soft brown eyes. “I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

“I think it was worth it,” he conceded with a half-smile. “You were a pretty good inspiration.”

Sansa’s smile brightened at the compliment, knowing full well that she had been no help to Podrick at all throughout the climb. He was just so sweet that she could hardly look at him for too long without feeling her skin start to flush an embarrassing red hue. There was just something about him that she found enthralling—something that caught her attention.

“Lighten up, will you?” A familiar voice disrupted the moment, causing both Podrick and Sansa to startle and glance in the direction of the sound. “I didn’t mean it like that, darling.”

Sansa realized Brienne was about to speak as soon as she recognized Jaime’s voice.

“I know exactly how you meant it,” Brienne bit back harshly, her blue eyes crackling as she strode forward and ignored her partner behind her. “Now please leave. I need to do my job.”

“Brienne-” Jaime started, sounding spectacularly winded. Had he run all the way to set from somewhere? Sansa could only assume so based on his demeanor. “Brienne, wait.” 

He had barely gotten a chance to say her name before she was heading in the opposite direction and muttering something unintelligible into her headset.

His shoulders slumped as he watched her leave, and Sansa couldn’t help but dwell on the advice he had once given her— _if you know what you want, you know what you want. If you don’t, it’s not what you want_. Did he know what he wanted from the first moment he had seen Brienne or was it a slow process, one in which he fell in love with her over time?

The process would work if she trusted it to, Sansa reminded herself. It would work.

* * *

The first thing Theon noticed upon seeing Podrick sheepishly wander into the living room of the mansion was the lipstick staining the corner of his mouth.

It was a glaring bright red that seemed to have been smudged in an attempt to rub it off, likely wanting to keep it to himself. His lips quirked downward at the sight of it paired with the matching rose pinned to his jacket, something akin to jealousy beginning to prickle at his skin like a toxic virus coursing through him with each moment that he stared at the visual proof that she was interested in other people, unable to look away.

She didn’t owe him anything.

They kissed once and then parted with a hug.

It was an act.

None of it was real.

He was just confused because it had been a while for him. He had never been good at separating that sort of… intimacy thing anyhow; he had only integrated an ex into his inner circle once but even then, it was just barely. Robb had always been the romantic of the pair of them. Gods, he hadn’t even had a proper girlfriend or boyfriend in years and even then, he preferred keeping that shit private and away from prying eyes. Privacy was something to be valued, especially when it came to people he hadn’t made his mind up about yet.

Friendship and romance had always diverged into two different streets for Theon, meeting only occasionally when he was drunk enough to think something meant more than it did.

He wasn’t a hopeless romantic nor was he deluded enough to think he was (or could be) the guy Sansa was looking for. She was looking for someone to marry; some guy with a good job and a charming smile who wouldn’t break her heart. He was here to help her find that.

It was his job to help her find the person she _really_ wanted to be with.

He rifled through the snack drawer in the kitchen as the guys caught up with Podrick about his date, wrinkling his nose at the sight of nothing but mixed nuts and unopened booze.

Nothing started fights between the guys like pumping them full of alcohol and leaving them to their own devices, he thought to himself as he eyed the tequila and vodka bottles lining the countertop closest to the oven. Eventually, he settled on grabbing a handful of nuts and popping them straight into his mouth. There had been infighting going on all night—from Griff and Lancel’s passive-aggressive banter to Dickon and Trystane eyeing each other skeptically throughout the night to whatever the hell had happened in the rec room right before Podrick had gotten home, the entire atmosphere of the house had grown tense.

Closing the pack of nuts shut, he stepped back into the room just to see Asher uncomfortably staring off into space on the couch. Adjacent to him was Colin who was quite literally twiddling his thumbs, and between the pair of them sat Dickon who glared intensely at Rakharo across the coffee table. Theon froze in place as two of the many cameras maneuvered around him to capture his reaction, not knowing what face to even make.

What was the context for this?

“What’s up, dude?” Dickon asked cheerfully, not seeming to pick up on the vibe in the room.

Rakharo merely pursed his lips and continued staring ahead of Dickon, not seeming to plan on replying. Podrick scooped a portion’s worth of buffalo sauce onto the chicken nugget he was eating, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him unlike the rest of the guys.

Willas coughed uncomfortably from where the mobile bar had been stationed near the grand piano, lifting a yellow-colored cocktail up to his mouth as the stare-off continued.

After about ten seconds of silence, Theon glanced back at the pair to see that Dickon was still looking at Rakharo just as intensely as he had been before he looked away.

Tension sparked through the room and no one dared to say a word.

What had even happened while he was away in the kitchen? He wasn’t gone for that long, right? Was this a fight from before the date? A continuation of something from a few days ago? He couldn’t tell—just that _something_ was happening whether he liked it or not.

Just when Theon was about to throw in the towel and say something—anything—to break the silence, Rakharo turned his head to the side with a strained grimace, finally meeting Dickon’s stare with his own. “You got something you wanna say?”

“No,” Dickon retorted crisply, not breaking their eye contact for a moment.

“Alright,” Rakharo raised his brows once. “That’s cool by me.”

Theon locked eyes with Willas across the room as the other man drained his drink, returning for another before he could do so much as refocus on what was going on between Rakharo and Dickon. Colin eyed Dickon nervously as Podrick leaned over to grab another chicken nugget from the silver platter they had been using for their reheated frozen food all day.

Rakharo and Dickon were staring at each other still and Gods was it unsettling.

“Are you mad?” Rakharo prodded, as if trying to force something out of him that no one else in the room was privy to. “You mad at me?”

“No,” Dickon shrugged and just as Theon thought that was the end of it, he kept going, squaring his jaw to prolong the conversation. “I’m actually kind of fascinated by it, man.”

“Oh, really?” The other man encouraged him, though the hostility in the room seemed to have multiplied by three times. Rakharo didn’t move a muscle. “How so?”

“I just didn’t think you had it in you,” Dickon gritted out.

“I know,” Rakharo agreed in a way that made it sound like he was disagreeing. “Me neither.”

“Good on you,” he narrowed his eyes, his grey hoodie somehow making him look even more like a frat star than the first day he had arrived wearing armor. The guy was a prick, that was for certain. Even without getting to know him, Theon knew that. “Good on you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man.” Rakharo looked ahead of him and crossed his arms over his chest. Everyone else on the couch seemed frozen in their actions, frightened of upsetting the odd balance that had come to exist as a product of the mild argument the pair were getting into.

“Let’s see how it works out for you,” Dickon advised, “bro.”

Podrick’s chewing seemed to be the loudest thing in the room as he popped chicken nugget after chicken nugget into his mouth, obstinately doing his very best not to acknowledge the bizarre correspondence happening five feet away from him. The sauce did look pretty good, Theon couldn’t help but notice as he dipped another nugget into the small container.

Feeling everyone’s eyes on him, Podrick paused. “Did you guys want my chicken nuggets?”

“No, that’s-” Rakharo started. “No.”

“No, no,” Trystane assured him from where he was standing beside the window.

“No, I’m good,” Colin shifted in his seat slightly as Dickon leaned further back in his seat.

* * *

With the cocktail party came the next wave of drama to hit the house.

Hugh had come back into the sitting room with flushed cheeks, stammering something about walking in on Griff and Sansa making out on the chaise. Theon couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy; he had only been given the go-ahead to talk to Sansa once since the first night and had gotten to interact with her even less on group dates. It was kind of ironic that the one time Hugh went to try to get to talk to her, she was making out with another guy.

“And she was on his lap?” Asher pressed him, grinning at the notion that Sansa wasn’t as tame or spotless as Harry’s season had made her out to be. “Like- how? Spell it out for us.”

Hugh groaned before complying. “She was just- you know, she was straddling him.”

Did Sansa even like Griff? She hadn’t mentioned it to him. What was there to even like about the guy? He had only seen him smile once or twice and even then, it wasn’t a pleasant sight.

Theon felt his gut-churning at the mental image of Sansa in her sparkling cocktail dress mauling Griff on the couch. Griff, the _social media influencer_ with bloody _blue hair_. From the corner of his eye, he could see Trystane frowning down into his glass of wine before downing the entire glass whole. Even Podrick looked uncomfortable at the description.

It was like a hive mind of jealousy.

He followed Dickon’s line of sight to the hall as if he was contemplating barging in on her time with Griff. It was too much to think about, too _weird_ to think about, but he found that he couldn’t stop. A lump built in his throat at the thought of Sansa leaning into Griff’s hand, blinking up at him like he had hung the moon and the stars all by himself. The sound of laughter coming from outside seemed to cause every ear in the room to prick up.

“I’m not gonna do that,” Asher protested quietly, the sound of his voice pulling Theon out of whatever misguided envy-ridden place in his mind he had wandered off into. “Come on.”

He was speaking to a producer—the young one wearing the backwards cap, though his name wasn’t coming to Theon. The producer was softly trying to convince Asher otherwise, placing a hand on his shoulder as if physical contact would make his argument more convincing. Trystane’s advice about producers suddenly rung through his head.

“Sansa wants to get to know you,” Theon could just faintly pick out the producer’s words from a string of hushed phrases. “This might be your only chance to stand out, man. Do you want to get sent home before she even gets a chance to know you? You’re _Asher Forrester_, man. You really want to take this one laying down? I didn’t take you for a coward.”

Asher looked doubtful, locking eyes with the man for a couple of seconds before sighing.

His expression was unreadable as he strode forward in a way that only a WFL player could do without looking like an idiot, not paying mind to any of the other guys as he confidently made his way back to where Sansa had been spending time with Griff.

Theon winced as he heard Asher bulldoze his way into the conversation the pair were having, the ‘_mind if I steal you?_’ practically booming through the entire mansion as the rest of the guys stood, frozen with shock.

Before long, Griff was stalking back into the living room, his every action followed by a rolling camera beside him.

It was like watching art come to life as Griff pulled Dickon and Domeric aside to start ranting at them about ‘the nerve of that guy’—an unintentional rivalry had been created in seconds, not quite genuine but not quite fake either. Trystane listened in on the conversation with interest as Griff ran a hand through his hair, his face flushed red with anger.

“After the stunt he pulled during the group date too?” Griff scoffed. “Fucking unbelievable.”

“If that’s how he’s going to play it, I don’t see why you don’t just fight fire with fire,” Dickon suggested dangerously with a shrug. “Go back in there and take her back from him.”

He kept his head down and his eyes trained on his glass of champagne, not wanting to attract any attention to himself with how these guys were ganging up on each other.

If he had still been in college?

Yeah, he probably would have been just as involved as the lot of them. Even so, he wasn’t here to make an ass of himself on television. If the other guys were going to stoop to fighting over her like a toy, he would just catalog it in the back of his head to tell her later. _She would want to know if they weren’t being fully genuine with her_, he told himself when a nagging part of his brain jeered victoriously at the prospect of her sending Griff home.

“I don’t know,” Domeric started hesitantly like he wasn’t sure where he was going with the voicing of his disagreement. Dickon raised his brows at him expectantly as Griff’s expression twisted into a scowl at the notion that Asher wasn’t in the wrong. The producer who had told him to interrupt was watching the exchange from atop a pull-out chair, a walkie talkie raised to his lips as he gestured for one of the cameras to get closer to the source of the minor disagreement. “Isn’t that the point of us having cocktail parties? To get to talk to her?”

“At least Asher has initiative,” Rakharo popped a salmon bite into his mouth, lounging back on the couch like he had come here for the hors d’oeuvres in the first place and not for the girl. Given how little he seemed to talk to Sansa, there was a good chance that he hadn’t planned on approaching her at all that night. “More than most of us can say for ourselves.”

“No offense, man, but you _were_ kind of hogging her,” Colin chipped in from where he had just refilled a glass of his champagne to the brim, more than just a little inebriated.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Griff shot back at him with accusing eyes. “You’ve actually had time with her. This was the first time I’ve talked to her all week and that dick had to-”

“I just think you’re overreacting, that’s all.” Colin lifted both hands in the air.

Theon lost patience with the argument that began taking place soon afterward, abandoning the cocktail party in a matter of seconds to push past Willas at the doorway and take refuge in the mansion’s study. They would get him when it was time for the rose ceremony, and it wasn’t like he needed the time with Sansa anyways. It was all pointless, as always, but even moving rooms couldn’t drown out the sound of shouting coming from the parlor.

* * *

“She really made you do that?” The corners of Robb’s edges crinkled as he laughed a bit too loudly to play it off like he wasn’t interested in her. Then again, it wasn’t like she didn’t know that he thought she was beautiful. It wasn’t like his intentions weren’t obvious when he slid into her DMs, particularly now that they were Facetiming for the third time this week. Her stories about her time in the pageant world never failed to keep him guessing, particularly the ones that involved knife-throwing and botched attempts at walking a tightrope. “The worst my grandmother ever did was force me to go to the opera with her.”

“That must have been _traumatizing_,” Margaery tutted, adjusting her phone ever so slightly from where she was laying on her bed, her hair splayed over her pillows. “You poor thing.”

“It was,” Robb murmured his agreement, twisting around on his own bed to get a better look at her. If he ignored the fact that it was a video call, he could almost pretend that she was here with him. He smiled at her lazily, playing her game as best as he could; she was tough to keep up with, but he made to for himself. “I don’t think I ever really recovered from it.”

“The good ones always have baggage,” she sighed, the half-smirk that took his breath away all those months ago on television causing his heart to constrict in his chest. “Such a shame.”

With all the grace of a mammoth, a rough knocking came to his closed door, followed by an impatient attempt to twist the door handle open. He could hear a frustrated huff outside.

“Did you lock your door?” Jeyne’s voice filtered through the door as Margaery raised a sculpted eyebrow at the interruption to their now-thirty-minute-long call. He had never wanted to will someone out of existence more as Jeyne proceeded to keep at the incessant knocking instead of taking a hint and going away. “What are you even _doing_ in there?”

“None of your business,” he gritted out. “What do you want, Jeyne?”

“The pizza guy’s here,” she informed him in the same snotty tone of voice that Jon somehow found endearing. Robb liked Jeyne, he did, but she was kind of the worst. “I don’t have any change and Gendry said he’s not paying for it again. Come on, Robb, help a girl out.”

“Ask Dad,” Robb rolled his eyes, his cheeks warming as Margaery shook with laughter on his pixelated screen (was Bran messing with the WiFi again?), unwilling to end this session early. The damned show was starting in fifteen minutes anyway, and he wasn’t sure he could endure the whole ‘Theon making out with Sansa’ thing without this.

“Your parents literally went to the airport an hour ago,” Jeyne returned to knocking at his door like some sort of deranged cat. “You’re probably the worst son ever, you know that?”

“No one asked you, Jeyne,” Robb countered with a light laugh as Margaery bit her lip to stop from laughing. He’d almost forgotten that they left— they were off to some super-secret filming thing where Sansa’s final two guys met up with her parents. Filming would be over soon enough, to Robb’s relief, and she would be home before they knew it. Uncle Brandon had taken one for the team and drove them to White Harbor in Robb’s stead. “Rickon?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jeyne snorted. “He doesn’t believe in tipping.”

Robb directed a defeated stare Margaery’s way as she smiled brightly at him, looking somewhat charmed by the interaction, embarrassing as it was. She was perfect like that.

“Help me, Robbi-Wan,” Jeyne singsonged as she tried at the door handle again like it would open on command if she tried hard enough. Wasn’t there a perfectly good piggy bank downstairs she could crack open if she really needed the money? “You’re my only hope.”

“Go ahead,” Margaery urged him with a wave of her hand, sitting up in her spot with the semblance of a bedhead from laying down for so long. She smoothed her curls down with a sly smile shot his way, always looking as if she knew something that he didn’t. “I promised Loras I would meet him soon, so it’s probably time for me to head out too. Text me?”

“Yeah,” Robb replied dopily, a dazed smile overcoming his face. “I’ll catch you later.”

And with that, the call had ended.

“I hate you,” Robb informed Jeyne as he flipped the lock and opened the door, leveling her with an unimpressed stare as he sighed and resigned himself to a night of torture on television. “The wallet’s on the table. Don’t take more than twenty bucks, okay?”

“No promises!” Jeyne called out as she slipped into his room to rob him blind.

* * *

The kiss had probably been the worst thing he had subjected his eyes to in his life.

It was weird enough to see Theon making out with his little sister without accompanying it with soft lighting and emotive music, let alone the shit he was saying about how much he cared about Sansa. He talked about how he met her in a surprising revelation—it baffled Robb that the network saw it fit to reveal that Theon was the mole during the second episode, especially with all the hubbub they had stirred about it, but the intention behind it became clear as soon as the camera panned to Theon staring dazedly at her as they danced, and then as they ate dinner, and then at the cocktail party, all the way up until the rose ceremony.

He recognized that look on Theon’s face better than anybody would.

It was the same face he had gotten when they accidentally walked in on Catelyn changing out of her shirt when they were twelve, and when he fancied himself in love with Tansy when they were fourteen, and when he watched the leading girl wade through the water in _Ophelia_.

No one else really seemed to buy into it, least of all Arya, who opened her mouth every few seconds to complain about how stupid they thought the audience had to be to buy into Theon being into her at all. Bran had merely hummed neutrally as Jon clenched his fists to his side, his stormy expression only softening as Jeyne peppered soft kisses to his cheek.

Gendry had consumed most of the food in their snack drawer minutes into the viewing party, watching the episode out of solidarity with the rest of the family over actual interest. He didn’t seem to care in the slightest bit about anything that happened on-screen, looking painfully bored throughout the whole thing and only perking up whenever fists were thrown or shouting took place. Robb wished he could care as little as Gendry did about it.

“Oooooh,” Rickon had smacked his lips together mockingly every time Theon and Sansa had interacted from that point onward, only occasionally looking up from his phone to make jokes. Robb could only grimace as Theon stood in line, the red rose on his suit jacket sticking out in the light. Three of them had roses already—Dickon, Theon, and Podrick—and there was a pile of them waiting on a podium beside Oberyn Martell as he spoke to the suitors.

“She has a tough decision to make tonight,” he trailed off with an upward tilt of his mouth as Sansa entered the room clad in a long deep green dress. “Sansa… whenever you’re ready.”

“This is bloody ridiculous,” Arya grumbled as she swung her feet over Gendry’s lap from where they were both sitting on the ground as per usual. “If she keeps Griff after all that-”

“I’ll kill her!” Jeyne burst out as if she couldn’t help herself, backing Arya up in a rare moment of solidarity and agreement between the pair of them. Arya nodded sagely in agreement. “I’ll find wherever she’s hiding and kill her with my bare hands. He’s just so-”

“Fucking smug,” Arya finished with a curl of her lip. “If she marries him, it’s his funeral.”

“Murder pact?” Jeyne held a pinky out, her cheeks tinted pink as she leaned over Jon and the coffee table to get close enough to touch her. “If she brings him home, we’ll make it look like an accident. Like- whoops, he fell off a ladder and broke his neck. So sad, so unexpected.”

Arya burst into laughter, the sound of it causing Robb to bristle with annoyance (wasn’t _anyone_ else concerned about the Theon thing?) her arm slung around Gendry’s shoulder as she linked pinkies with Jeyne to complete the oath. “I was thinking electrocution was the way to go. You know, hairdryer falling into the bathtub? So tragic, happens all the time.”

“Genius,” Jeyne agreed with a tinkle of laughter as Sansa called Lancel forward, pinning a rose to his suit before they could do so much as ‘boo’ at her poor choices. “It’s a deal.”

Robb tried not to roll his eyes as Sansa called Dickon’s name, trying to trust her judgment beyond what _The Bachelorette_ had decided to show them of him. The guy was clearly presented as the villain and she seemed none the wiser, grinning fervently at him as she got the rose on his jacket. He hugged her tightly before retreating back to his position in line.

“Dany thinks she’s going to choose Willas,” Jon didn’t look up from his phone as he favorited a Tweet sent out from his aunt’s account. He tilted his head to rest his chin on the top Jeyne’s head as he addressed her specifically, the smallest smile gracing his lips. “We should have them over at our place soon. Yara wanted to give us a housewarming present.”

“Can we do Friday?” Jeyne pursed her lips as if trying to conjure their planner out of thin air. She cuddled into him in a typical display of unrestrained PDA. It didn’t make Robb feel great about being the only single guy there barring Rickon, but it didn’t seem like Jon ever minded how touchy she was with him. He seemed to enjoy the attention if Robb had to make a wager as to how he felt about all of it. “Ask her if she can make Friday at eight.”

“Asher,” Sansa murmured, twisting a rose around her fingers as the blond man stepped forward with a grin, pulling her into a bear hug before she could even ask him to accept her rose. Robb almost missed the fist pump Arya did as he set Sansa down, her favorite of the batch seeming to be clear in spite of the obvious cause for concern.

Did they really think it was fake?

The camera panned to Theon once the other man retreated, his eyes thoughtful as he watched Sansa from a distance. Gods, this wasn’t good. He was torn between wanting to murder him and wanting to shake some sense into him for somehow awakening a bizarre crush on Sansa of all people in the middle of her season as the Bachelorette. He didn’t have it in him to sympathize with him yet, especially since the horror of watching Theon stick his tongue down her throat still hadn’t worn off. Even thinking about it caused him to shiver. Gross.

“Rakharo,” she beckoned him forward on screen, smiling slightly at the dark-haired man who approached her with a beaming smile. The camera then panned to Domeric, and then Colin, and then Willas, and then to Hugh to dramatize the moment. “Will you accept this rose?”

He, of course, responded with his consent and then rejoined the line of men in the front row.

Willas and Domeric soon followed, though he doubted anyone really cared, even the ‘stans’ on Twitter who took to taking everything at face value. He recalled being harassed in his DMs by a few people the week that Sansa had argued with Talisa over a group date gone wrong in which everyone on their team blamed each other for losing the challenge. She had gotten a good edit overall but even that one incident was enough to raise his brows at the vigor that some of the show’s fans seemed to approach contestants’ families with online.

“They can do Friday,” Jon interrupted the tense moment on-screen of the camera panning to one rose on the podium, flashing Jeyne the phone screen. He paused as another notification flashed on his screen before he squinted to make sense of it. “She said we can come over to hers next Monday to watch the show. Or they can come here. Should they come here?”

Jeyne nodded wordlessly; her eyes were glued to the screen as Bran shushed them with annoyance, setting his tablet down to watch the next events for himself.

Bran’s jaw ticked with annoyance as she beckoned Griff forward and pinned his rose to his jacket with starry eyes, prompting a chorus of groans and threats from both Jeyne and Arya.

“Unfortunately, there is one rose left.” Oberyn started, clasping his hands in front of him as the three remaining men without roses stared ahead of them. “Two of you will be leaving us tonight. If your name isn’t called, say your goodbyes and leave the mansion. Sansa?”

The moment was drawn out far longer than necessary just for the predictable answer to ring true as if the lot of them didn’t know that she was about to call Trystane’s name.

“Trystane,” she smiled softly, her eyes glassy as the other man walked up to her. They embraced quickly before she followed the usual script of asking if he would accept her rose and pinning it onto him, smoothing out the lint on his shoulders once before releasing him.

“I’m not surprised,” Hugh spoke in a voiceover as he walked up to Sansa on-screen and murmured something to her before turning to leave the room. “I barely got any time with her at all. I really hope she knows what she’s doing because some of these guys… they’re just not here for the right reasons, that’s all.” He shrugged his jacket off as he walked towards the black car that was waiting for him. “I wasn’t the guy for her and that’s fine. But I don’t know if she’s making the right decisions here.” The camera panned to Theon who was eyeing Dickon as Sansa made a toast that none of them could hear, then flitting across to display Willas and Trystane’s faces as they tipped their glasses back to drink their champagne.

Colin then came into view, his brows furrowed. “I feel blindsided. I thought we were-” he cut off as he moved to sit in his spot in a separate car, biting his lower lip in the most dramatic way someone who had known a girl for two weeks could mourn their relationship. “I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. I’m going home and there’s nothing I can do to change her mind.” As Sansa sipped her champagne, snickering at a joke Griff was telling, he continued while his car drove away. “It doesn’t change the fact that there are dishonest people here.”

Robb’s brows furrowed as he kept going, talking in a cryptic way that only actors could manage to do. Asher clapped Domeric on the shoulder as the celebration continued alongside the confirmation that they were down to the final ten guys now. How had twenty of them already gone home? Arya seemed to have a similar line of thought as she made a puzzled face, reaching for her phone to tweet something out as she always did.

“She’ll have to learn it the hard way, I guess.” The camera refocused on Sansa as a bit of champagne dribbled over her chin, prompting her to begin laughing. She beamed at Trystane while Colin continued on, his voice tinged with bitterness. “Unless she starts seeing these guys for who they really are, she’s going to get her heart broken.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are super appreciated. follow me at briala on tumblr!


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